


A Book of Myths

by belantana



Category: Inspector Rebus - Ian Rankin, Silent Witness (TV), Spooks | MI-5
Genre: Apocalypse, Crossover, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-19
Updated: 2010-09-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 20:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belantana/pseuds/belantana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>There are just some things you can't do, even at the end of the world.</em><br/>Co-written by the marvellous londonsophie. Set in 2012 in a post-8.02 AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/51922.html) (further notes and introduction there). With many thanks to afiakate for sifting through the mess.

_We are, I am, you are / by cowardice or courage / the one who find our way / back to this scene  
carrying a knife, a camera / a book of myths / in which / our names do not appear._

\-- from _Diving into the Wreck_ by Adrienne Rich

 

 

"This completes stage one of the pathology investigation," says Harry Cunningham, putting down the pointer and switching on the lights. The audience blinks back at him, some bleary-eyed, some attentive. The front row is awash with the dull colours of the Forces, but behind that there is mostly black, like a sort of collective national mourning. "I'll take questions," he says, to relieve the silence. He doesn't want any questions. He hasn't been allowed to ask any himself, after all.

"Any injuries inconsistent with the nature of the events? You said two patterns of injury."

Harry dislikes the new language of euphemisms. "No. It's normal to have burns deaths close to dirty bombs, from the explosive. Eight centres where burns deaths were sampled from means at least eight explosions. It's not inconsistent with the mass radiation deaths from the rest of the zone."

"We have not previously predicted immediate mass radiation deaths from dirty bombs." Second row. MoD, maybe. They all look the same.

"It's not my field," says Harry. "I can only tell you what they died of. I received samples from all over London. Acute radiation sickness was the most common cause of death until the cordon closed six weeks ago. They must have been very dirty, that's all I can say."

"External radiation sources only?" says somebody in the front row.

Harry shrugs. "The food and water could have been contaminated towards the end. There was enteritis, other organ effects."

"Quick for enteritis."

"What about the outer zones?"

"Did you get anything from south of the river?"

"How quickly did they die?"

Harry wonders if they have listened to anything he's said, although perhaps this is just as well. "I have bodies from the day of the bombs until the cordon closed two weeks later, covering all sectors of the city. I can show you acute radiation sickness in every stage."

"What kind of radiation dose kills by two weeks?"

"You're asking the wrong person..." starts Harry, but the audience is turning in on itself, ignoring him.

"They didn't all die, we evacuated thousands before the cordon closed."

"Well they're dying too. It's not the expected pattern. Not what we were prepared for."

"You weren't prepared for anything."

Harry raises his voice. "If you want to see the slower onset cases, I suspect you can still catch some of them in the designated evacuation hospitals."

"And after that in mass graves?" It is an unexpected voice, soft and slow amidst the hubbub, but Harry can't find the face.

"Yes," he says anyway. "Apart from these bodies designated of interest to the investigation, the rest who die outside London are being decontaminated and safely dealt with. I don't know what's happening to the bodies in London."

"Not a lot," says the second row man.

"If we were to bring more bodies out, would it be useful to your investigation?"

Harry pauses for a second, shakes his head.

"Right then. As I thought."

It seems to be the signal to disband, the audience start rising to their feet. Harry sits down behind the lectern and shuts his eyes. With any luck he'll open them and find them all gone. He counts to five, then ten for safety, and then he opens them.

"Hide and seek?"

Harry almost smiles. "Something like that. You were the one who asked about mass graves, weren't you?"

"It was getting boring," she says. She looks Security Services. Harry is learning to recognise them.

"Can I help you with anything?"

"You gave a good talk."

Harry waits.

"I'd like to hear more about it. What you found."

"Why?"

"I'd like to know how they died."

"That's your job, is it?"

She is shrugging herself into her jacket, doesn't bother to look up. "I work for the Security Services. I could say it's my job, if that would help." She reaches up and frees her hair from her collar, and it tumbles unexpectedly on to her shoulders, pale in the studio lights. It is just a moment, the faintest resemblance, but Harry finds himself almost unable to speak.

"Who was there?" he manages at last. "Family? Husband?"

"Everyone," she says simply.

There is something genuine about her, but the Services are all the same and Harry knows his limits.

"I don't have anything else to tell you," he says quietly. "You can keep gatecrashing updates, if you want."

"I will," she says.

 

\- -

 

It is approaching midnight, but Jo doesn't hesitate before driving back to the office. For years she couldn't sleep in an empty house and now she can't sleep in a full one. The streets are clear, which is eerie. Edinburgh traffic by day is as chaotic as can be expected in a city suddenly taken on the role of capital.

She is stopped twice on her way and by the time she gets to the office (she can't think of it as the grid), everything is dark. She stops in the corridor with her finger on the lightswitch. There is a faint glow spilling across the floor from the far corner of the room. She smiles wryly to herself. She has a pretty good idea who else can't sleep.

There is a tiny annexe off the corridor where she's set up a kettle and tea things. It's really more of a cupboard; no room for a fridge. Keep calm, carry on, make tea, she thinks. She is getting used to having it without milk.

Malcolm glances at her out of the corner of his eye as she sets the cups down on the desk, but he doesn't look away from the screen.

"Anything?" asks Jo.

Malcolm sighs. Dozens of channels are open on the screen in front of him, none displaying a single blip. "Not tonight," he says with false optimism.

"Malcolm, it's after midnight. You should sleep."

"I have slept."

Yesterday, she thinks but doesn't say. She's tried asking Malcolm what he's looking for but she suspects he doesn't know either, and that it doesn't matter. Scouring every possible form of communication is a vigil which must be kept up when officers are missing. She wouldn't stop him if she could.

He notices the mug she's pushed towards him, and stares at it for a short moment before picking it up.

"No milk, sorry," Jo says with a smile.

"You should get some sleep too."

"I tried," she says, which is partly true. Malcolm looks at her doubtfully. Fat lot of good they do each other, she thinks.

The lights flick on, making them both squint. Lucas drops keys and coat on his desk. "Are you practising your night vision?"

"It helps the concentration," Malcolm says with faint annoyance.

"Of course." Lucas turns to Jo. "Anything from the pathologist?"

"Not really. Well, I don't know. Not in his presentation."

Lucas, who knows Jo, waits for more. "He was keeping something back," she says eventually. "I don't know what. He was very clear in what he said. Nobody else seemed bothered but they're so bloody disorganised they were barely listening. Nobody knows who's in charge."

Lucas raises an eyebrow. "Well if it's to be decided by who's the most organised, it certainly won't be us."

"You haven't seen what the others are like." Jo frowns, watching Lucas pacing. Whatever he has been up to in the middle of the night it has left him unable to sit still and looking like he wants to break something. Jo not for the first time thinks of Ros, then of Adam.

"What's up?"

Lucas glances at her, and realising how tense he must look drops into a chair with something of a smile. "Dolby wants me to go to Birmingham on Monday. Apparently the network they had set up there is a mess."

"As in, a compromised mess?"

"Maybe."

He's angry, that's obvious, but Jo doesn't think it's at the possibility of betrayal. It's at the fact that he has to go, the distraction from everything they have to do here. She would press him further but she's suddenly tired and doesn't want to know about any new problems. She collects up the empty mugs and leaves Lucas checking something through with Malcolm. Maybe she'll sleep after all.

"Jo, I need to ask you something."

Lucas has followed her to the kitchen, and stands in the doorway watching her rinse the mugs. "Do you want me to go to Birmingham instead?" she asks. "You've so much else to do here."

"No, it's okay." He hesitates, which is enough to make her put down what she's doing and pay attention.

"What is it?"

"I got a message," he says finally. "From someone who claimed he used to work in Section D."

"Tom?" Jo asks. She doesn't know Tom, but she has heard of him. Anyone who might be alive is of interest now, no matter how long they've been out of the service.

Lucas shakes his head. "No. I haven't heard from him." He seems about to explain further, then hesitates again, looking puzzled more than anything. "He said he was Zafar Younis."

Jo stares.

"I don't have to tell you, it could be anyone, wanting god knows what. I didn't want Malcolm thinking – but I know he didn't get a message. Have you heard anything?"

She shakes her head.

"It's probably nothing," Lucas says again.

"Are you meeting him?"

"Next week. Once I'm out of Edinburgh, off the record. Dolby wouldn't approve. I'm sorry for bringing it up, really, but I had to ask."

"It's fine," Jo says steadily. "Let me know what it's all about."

He smiles then, a little. "Of course. You going home now?"

"Yes."

"To sleep?"

Jo rolls her eyes, but she appreciates the smile. "And you're setting such a good example."

"I'm senior to you," he says obstinately. "I don't get to sleep until I can get Malcolm to."

"Good luck with that," Jo mutters, and suddenly nothing's funny any more.

 

\- -

 

The next time Jo goes to an update, it isn't Harry, it's a thin ginger man with an uncompromising expression. He talks about distance from bombs and bone marrow failure. Jo listens, but afterwards she slips through the side door of the auditorium, and follows the signs towards the autopsy suites.

She finds Harry sitting on a bench outside the second suite, apparently staring into space.

"You again," he says. "Aren't you people quite busy at the moment?"

"You weren't at the update."

"It's nice to share," says Harry. "Didn't your mother teach you that?"

"Don't you want to know? About the findings?"

"I already know," says Harry with some finality.

Jo runs her eyes over him professionally. He is sitting hunched over, leaning his elbows on his knees. There is a sort of shocked calm about him. She has seen this before.

"Dr Cunningham," she says, sitting down next to him.

"Oh, you know my name now. I suppose you can find out anything you want to."

"You introduced yourself at your talk," Jo reminds him, though she likes the idea of being omniscient.

"So I did."

"Are you all right? You look – as though something's happened." Frightened, she wants to say, but instinct prevents her.

He seems to make some attempt to pull himself together, brings his eyes in to focus. "I'm all right."

"Can I help you?" She has no idea where this comes from. She's not interested in helping anyone, least of all strangers. Not now.

He summons a sort of smile. "I doubt it."

"So you do need help."

He straightens up. "What's your name, spy lady?"

"Jo Portman."

"Guess that's not your real name."

"You can guess what you like, Dr Cunningham."

"All right then, Jo Portman. What would a forensic pathologist do if he needed to get into London?"

She pauses. "He'd think about it very carefully indeed."

"Still think you can help me?"

Jo considers all the places this could be going, and likes none of them. "Why would you need to go?"

"What if I'd found something... inconsistent?"

"What kind of inconsistent?"

He gives her a wary look. "Let's just say inconsistent. What if I needed to see the evidence for myself?"

"There are official routes. They could bring you more bodies."

"Not helpful."

"It's a radiation zone."

"Some of it. They were only dirty bombs, it's not a nuclear explosion."

"There's evidence that you would risk your life for?"

"I don't know," he says. "I'm still thinking about it."

She is startled. There is a certain casual humour to him that makes him hard to take seriously.

"I could almost do it alone," he says. "Request more bodies for the investigation. Sneak in with the team to pick them up. They just send four army guys in a van. Who'd know?"

"The four army guys," suggests Jo.

"I'd hide in the van."

"And then you'd need to get back out."

He is silent for quite some time. "You could do it, couldn't you?"

"Not without a very good reason. When you're ready to tell me, you can let me know," says Jo.

 

\- -

 

Malcolm knows there's no one left. He and Jo were a hundred miles from London when the bombs went off, and they watched from a distance what they'd expected for half their professional lives to be watching from the inside.

"You saved my life," Jo had said to him.

"Again," Malcolm had said, but he hadn't meant it. He still wonders why Jo had come to visit him, still suspects the motive was pity. For a break, she had said, so tired that he could almost believe it. Where else could she go to rest, these days?

She got two days.

The initial panicked reports had seemed huge, impossible to imagine – damage as far apart as Hyde Park, Whitechapel. Malcolm couldn't help the map in his head, extrapolating to the point of explosion with rings radiating out in brilliant colour. Then the confirmation of the Parliament Square bomb, and the images from the Palace, and the realisation that this wasn't a single attack but many. It was days before the map on the news stopped being redrawn, the count settling at eight explosions, each quite small and isolated. To Malcolm the size hardly mattered. That kind of coordination meant detailed planning, preparation, records, run-throughs. Everything which had been missed.

He watched the communication systems collapse under the panic of the evacuation, and two weeks later when the cordon closed he watched everything slowly restore to static and silence. He keeps watching. Jo asks him what for, and he doesn't have an answer. I'll know it when I see it, he tells himself.

And now he knows.

Jo is tapping a pen against her desk while reading, and he had been working up enough irritation to ask her to stop, but now he doesn't even notice her. He keeps silent until he has run through some tests and is absolutely certain what he's seeing.

Finally he clears his throat. "Jo."

She is immediately paying attention. "What is it?"

Their desks are in the far corner of the room, deliberately away from the rest of the disorganisation. Jo at least has made an effort to remember names, but the people sorting through recovered data and shouting on phones seem to Malcolm to change every day. The Service is pulling in people from all over but none of them seem to belong the way he and Jo do. He waits until she comes around to look at his screen.

"It's a sort of flare," he explains, forcing himself to be calm. "Just a single blip but in a deliberate pattern."

Jo is watching the static on the screen with confusion. "You picked out a _pattern_ from amongst all that noise?"

"Well," says Malcolm modestly, "I did write it."

"The pattern?"

"It's an old emergency code. From the early days."

"Where is it broadcasting from?"

Malcolm frowns. "I don't know. Around London."

" _What?_ Where in London?"

"Not _in_ London," Malcolm says, aggrieved. "Around it. Through it. Lots of different places."

Jo is giving him the expression of uncomprehending frustration that people have given him all his life. He sighs, trying again. "London is sort of blocked off. I don't really know what's happening – lots of blast damage to masts and telephone networks, probably. This code is being sent in a signal that's coming from a whole lot of places round the outside of the M25, and a few inside, though the signal's much weaker from there. Very technically sound approach, but it doesn't tell you where it's coming from."

"Can you find out where?"

"I'm trying to isolate the original transmission. It'll take a while. Using London is a good way to attract attention, but it could be from anywhere at the moment."

"Malcolm, it's a code that _you wrote_ , from the early days of our section – "

"It predates all this section nonsense. Quite a few people knew it."

"Well isn't it going to be one of them sending it? One of those people who learnt the code and who knew you'd be listening? If you were alive, that is."

Malcolm gives her a reproachful look.

Jo shakes her head, and the confusion falls from her like a mask, leaving her calm and professional. She has learned that from Ros, Malcolm thinks. Adam could never do it. Neither can Malcolm. "Can we communicate with them?"

"Communicate is a strong word for it," says Malcolm. "I could try sending the pattern back."

"Do it. Right now. They'll be waiting."

He's already started to work on it. "You know the transmission's on a loop," he says without looking at her.

"Somebody had to start it," Jo says.

"And when I've sent it?"

"Maybe they'll send something back."

"And if they do?" Malcolm has started to type.

"Then we'd better go and find them," says Jo, which surprises them both into silence.

 

\- -

 

They call Lucas from the meeting room. It's stacked head-high with files, but it has a door, which makes it a meeting room. Lucas is driving. The phone line is clear but he sounds distant, hard. He listens in silence while Malcolm explains the transmission as succinctly as he can. "I won't know more until they – _if_ they reply," he finishes.

"Right. Is anyone else receiving it?"

Malcolm and Jo share a glance. "I don't know. Possibly the army, they're stationed all around the outskirts."

"I'll deal with that. Find out if anyone else has picked it up. No reports."

"What does that mean?" Jo asks.

"It means what I said. Nothing written down. Not yet. Anything you find directly to me. Is that clear?"

No, Jo thinks, it's the exact opposite. "You're not here," she points out.

But Malcolm trusts Lucas implicitly, and is already nodding. "It's clear."

"Good." She hears the car shift gears, Lucas consciously tempering his tone. "I'm sorry this had to happen now. I'll be back in a few days and we'll deal with it then."

"Fine," Jo says flatly. She wants to ask Lucas about the message he received, and if he has arranged to meet the sender, and if it has anything to do with Malcolm's signal which she suspects from Lucas's dismissal that it does. But she still hasn't told Malcolm about it, and Lucas is not offering information.

"Have you figured out what that pathologist is hiding yet?"

"No," she answers. "He's stubborn."

"So are you."

It sounds like an apology and she accepts it with a grudging smile, which is how she and Lucas seem to end all their conversations these days. "I suppose I am."

"I'll see you in a few days."

Jo hangs up and looks at Malcolm, hoping to share some frustration, but he seems content with Lucas's instruction. "So, we're running internal investigations again," he says, as if it is a good thing.

"Just like the old days," Jo says dryly.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are developments.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Co-written by londonsophie. Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/52446.html).

For all the years that Edinburgh has been her home, DCI Siobhan Clarke has stubbornly held on to her English accent. It used to mean dealing with occasional suspicion from the more territorial in CID. Now it means consistently being singled out by the influx from London for everything from clarification to favours to sympathy to confidences she doesn't want.

She is considering pretending to be Scottish, put it that way. Rebus would have laughed.

The investigation is moving at a painfully slow speed. Thoroughness, she knows, is important, plus of course everything takes twice as long these days. But sometimes she just wants to scream with frustration.

She is on her way to a lunch meeting with the Chief Constable when she notices the woman following her. She is doing a bad job of it, hanging back and then rushing anxiously to catch up, glancing over her shoulder as if afraid she herself is being tailed.

Siobhan stifles a groan. She waits until the woman is close behind before swinging round, arms folded, best stern expression she usually saves for uniform. The woman nearly runs in to her.

"Come on then. What do you want? Daily Mail? I thought you already had enough inside sources."

The woman, girl really, is wringing her hands and looking wretched. "Sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean – "

She is from London, of course. Siobhan almost unconsciously lets a note of Scots into her voice. "You didn't mean for me to see you. And then you planned to eavesdrop on my meeting, I suppose." Siobhan looks her up and down; jeans, boots, sparkly earrings. "They'd have stopped you at the door."

"My boss said I shouldn't even – oh hell," she covers her face briefly, nearly giggling in her embarrassment, "maybe I should just ask you."

Siobhan rolls her eyes. "If it's about the investigation, talk to the Press Office."

"I've got this story and my boss won't run it," the girl says, as if she hasn't heard. "He says it's ridiculous and it'll just get us arrested for causing panic, and it _is_ really, it's ridiculous. But what if it's true? I mean, we'll _have_ to run it, right? Even if there's the tiniest possibility that it's true?"

Siobhan is quickly losing patience. She starts walking again. "Talk to the Press Office."

"I've tried," the girl implores, nearly tripping as she rushes to catch up with Siobhan. "They won't even talk to me."

"I'm not surprised," Siobhan mutters.

"I've seen you in the interviews. You don't do the bullshit like some of the others, all that _all avenues are being fully investigated_ stuff. I thought if I could just get it from you – then I'd know."

"Know _what?_ "

The girl takes a deep breath. "There are rumours about transmissions. From London. You know, aside from the army and the patrols and stuff. Other transmissions."

"Right."

" _Is_ it ridiculous?"

"Utterly," Siobhan says, without meaning to.

"You're sure?"

"London's been evacuated. Everyone knows that."

"But you've heard nothing?"

"If I had I'd hardly be telling you." Siobhan narrows her eyes. "Where are you getting this? Who's your source?"

The girl is already moving back into the crowds. She doesn't look relieved, as Siobhan expects, but curiously blank, almost frightened. "Thanks," she says. She steps out into the traffic and disappears.

 

\- -

 

"Nothing," Jo says into her phone. "She was honestly surprised. If she knew of any communications she'd have asked for my source straight away."

"I see," says Malcolm slowly. "The police might just not be looking, or – "

"Or that message was meant only for you. Malcolm, can you find out where Dr Cunningham is today? He's the only one seems to know something odd is going on."

"Certainly."

"Have you got through to Lucas?"

She hears Malcolm pause before replying. "Not yet. You know how unreliable the mobile networks are in the south. I'll try him again in an hour."

Jo closes her eyes briefly. She feels suddenly out of her depth, as if things are happening faster than she can notice them. An idea is forming in her head. She's good at making judgement calls on information but she isn't used to doing it on her own, and she isn't prepared to call this one without Lucas's assessment.

There is a silence. "Dr Cunningham has no meetings scheduled today. He should be at his office."

"Thanks, Malcolm."

She wants to ask something else, but can't think what. Malcolm has already rung off. She sighs.

Hiding in some department store toilets, she gets rid of the stupid earrings and swaps her jacket. She starts to pull up her hair but stops when she remembers Harry Cunningham's expression the other day. She knows she didn't imagine it. She leaves her hair down.

What is she now, a journalist-cum-spy pretending to be a journalist, and now pretending to be whoever it is Harry Cunningham has lost? It makes her head ache thinking about it, but it is better than thinking about other things.

 

\- -

 

He finds he isn't surprised when she turns up in the locker room, sitting coolly on a bench.

"Ready to talk?" she says.

Harry bangs open his locker. "If I was ready to talk, I'd have contacted you."

He can feel her eyes on his back as he rummages for his sweater and jacket. Perhaps he takes a little longer than necessary.

"The situation has changed."

Harry drags the sweater over his head. "What does that mean?"

"It means, it's changed."

"So? I can drive a car into London now, can I? Cruise down the M1 with the roof down?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"God, you're all the bloody _same_. In a manner of speaking, what does that mean?"

"You want to go to London," she says. "Maybe I could offer that to you."

Harry puts on the jacket on to give himself some thinking time. She is watching him like a patient primary school teacher.

"Of course, I'd have to know why you were going."

"I told you. I need to collect more evidence for the investigation. More bodies." He stops, waiting for her to argue, but she just watches him, narrow-eyed. "I could PM in the field. I don't need long."

"To find what? What are those PMs going to tell you?"

He shrugs, stubbornly mute.

"I am offering you a big favour," says Jo. "You explain, we go. Pretty simple. Sleep on it."

She is halfway out of the door before Harry can pull himself together. "You wouldn't be doing it unless there was something in it for you," he calls after her.

She looks briefly over her shoulder, perfectly dispassionate. "Obviously," she says, and keeps walking.

 

\- -

 

Jo comes back to the grid exhausted, frustrated, more than a little scared and badly needing a quiet corner to cry in for a while. Apparently it's too much to ask for. Malcolm is sitting at her desk, watching his silent communication channels.

"Heard anything?" she asks, knowing he'd have called if he had.

"Nothing." He sounds as if it is a personal insult. "Just that first half hour, then they dropped back off the face of the earth."

Jo stands pointedly next to her desk. Eventually he looks up. "Oh, sorry. I needed a change of scenery."

"Malcolm," she prompts tiredly. She is not in the mood for wheedling information.

"Have you heard from Lucas?" he asks, ignoring her.

"The phones in Birmingham are down again. You told me that."

"I know. But Dolby got his report yesterday. He should be on his way back by now."

Jo leans against the nearest vacant desk, rubbing her eyes. "He had – other things to see to," she says vaguely. "He mentioned."

Malcolm is staring at her.

" _Malcolm_. What?"

"I know he got a message, Jo. I know he was going to meet someone. I know he had his own reasons for not wanting to tell me who it was, but he told you, didn't he?"

Jo hesitates, feeling ashamed, then furious, then tired again. She tries to remember why exactly she is keeping this a secret, and the best reason she can come up with is that she doesn't want to think about it.

"The message was from someone claiming to be Zaf," she says finally.

" _Zaf?_ "

"It's not," she says mechanically. "Must have been someone who wanted Lucas's attention, knew what names to use. Anyway, he was chasing it up. That's why he's not back yet."

"But why Zaf's name? Lucas didn't know Zaf. It's a long shot he'd even recognise the name."

"Malcolm," she says warningly.

"Think about it. It doesn't make sense."

Jo sits, head in hands, trying to reason with him logically. "And what does? That Zaf's alive after all this time? That he's appeared from nowhere now that things have gone to hell, and contacted Lucas whom he doesn't even know – not you, or me?"

"It's somebody making an official approach to the appropriate person. Somebody who wants to be taken seriously."

"Yes and Zaf was a great one for doing things the appropriate and official way," snaps Jo. She can't believe she's arguing this, with Malcolm of all people. She wants to cry. She wants to shout, of course I _want_ it to be Zaf, of course I _want_ to believe it.

Malcolm is relentless. "You need to go down there to Birmingham. We need to know."

"I'm going to London," she says.

This stops him. He looks at her as if she is mad, and Jo tries to hide her own surprise at the decision. It had been an idea in her head this morning, something to be discussed with Lucas when he returned. Now apparently it is a plan of action.

"You won't find the signal," says Malcolm suspiciously. "I still can't trace where it originates from."

Jo shakes her head. "There are other reasons I need to go. There's something going on with the bodies and the only way I'm going to get this bloody pathologist to talk is if I get him to show me. He's already worked out a plan to get through the cordon. He'll go on his own if I don't stop stalling soon."

"Lucas would never allow it."

"Lucas isn't _here_."

They stare at each other for a long moment, on the edge of verbalising what has been on both their minds since the last contact with Lucas. Jo knew then Lucas was hiding something and she is no nearer to understanding what it is, but there is a sense of urgency in her decision which she can't explain. She can tell from his resigned expression that Malcolm feels it too.

Jo forces herself to be rational. "Lucas is dealing with this – Zaf thing. Whether it has something to do with your signal or not I don't know. We have to trust him for now. If we still can't make contact with him tomorrow night we'll have to report it."

"You know we can't let this get out to anyone else. If it _is_ Zaf…"

Jo stands. "We'll have to report it," she repeats. "Whatever it is, I can't – I don't want anything to do with it. I need to go to London."

She leaves without another word, fully aware of how unfair she is being, but unable help it. Yes, she'd prefer to risk her life illegally entering a radiation zone with a stubbornly secretive pathologist she doesn't even know, than to have to face someone pretending for whatever reason to be Zaf. There are just some things you can't do, even at the end of the world.

 

\- -

 

For the first time in weeks Harry has actually taken his afternoon off, and is having coffee with Janet.

If someone had asked him a few months ago to pick the survivors, he would have said Leo and Nikki. Leo because he has survived so much already and would do anything to keep Nikki safe. Nikki because he once had a dream, after a few too many grisly murders and a lot too many glasses of wine, of Nikki calmly sharpening a pencil at her desk while body after body was brought in, the procession only stopping when there was no one left to carry them. That was years ago, and he's seen her upset and frightened and human enough times since then, but the image has stayed.

No one asked him to pick, of course, when the time came. So here they are, he and Janet. He avoids mentioning Leo, she avoids mentioning Nikki, and they share coffee and mundane conversation. Harry hates the false bravado of it until Janet points out that if they can pretend to be managing, they are.

"Well," he says, but he knows it's true. He's seen enough people who aren't managing to recognise that coffee and conversation is something of an achievement. He adjusts his perception of Janet accordingly.

Janet has put aside her academia for what she calls more important things, and spends her days at the various relief centres trying to reunite families. For the last hour, Harry has been helping her cross names off all the lists people have posted around the city, which is a job for at least seven people but two is better than one. He doesn't ask for which reason the names are being crossed off.

The coffee is terrible and he thinks of Leo, wonders if Janet is too and if he can bring it up. Then his phone rings and all other thoughts go from his mind.

He moves a few paces away to take the call, clumsily feigning a better signal, aware of Janet overhearing. But Jo is quick and professional and tailors her questions so he can answer without giving anything away.

"Dr Cunningham. I take it you haven't changed your mind about what we've discussed. Are you free tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow?" he repeats. "I – yes, of course."

"Good. We'll need to leave now." She gives the details, precise. "Can you arrange things your end?"

"Fine."

He thinks about asking her how she got his number, but he isn't stupid. "What's made you – has something happened?"

"Something is always happening, Harry," she says, suddenly warm, before hanging up and leaving him staring at the phone in his hand.

Janet has pushed her coffee aside. "Leo would say to complain," she says, glancing to the cafe counter where a cross-looking girl is scowling at the machine. "But I don't think that's very charitable, do you?"

Harry half-smiles. "He'd say she needs to learn." He puts the phone back in his pocket. "Sorry, I have to rush off. Can I give you a lift?"

Janet shakes her head. "It's fine, I like the walk. Is it something with the investigation?"

"Yes," he says, truthfully. Belatedly he wonders if he shouldn't make up some sort of alibi, but he's always been an appalling liar.

"All these questions," Janet says as they head out onto the street. "Aren't you sick of it? Hows and wheres and whens? What's the point of – of _knowing_ all the details?"

It's the basis for Harry's entire career and life passion, but he pauses before answering. "So it doesn't happen again," he says, aware of how awkward it sounds.

"I think the question you want then is why."

"I'm not quite ready for why yet."

"No," Janet admits. "Neither am I."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are journeys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Co-written by londonsophie. Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/53241.html).

Jo drives.

"Why do you get to drive?" Harry's nerves are making him flippant. "Do you spies get special driving training? You know, driving extra fast, dodging bullets, that kind of thing."

"Actually, yes," says Jo, peacefully doing an even ninety miles an hour down the empty motorway.

"Oh," says Harry, deflating. "I thought you were going to tell me how you sat at a desk and spying wasn't all that glamorous."

"I do sit at a desk," says Jo. "It's not glamorous."

"Never? Never just a little bit glamorous?"

She considers. "Once I got to wear an Armani suit," she concedes.

"Good God, is that what I pay my taxes for?"

He swears he can see her mouth twitch. He doesn't think he's ever really seen her smile.

"You got a good return for your taxes that day."

"Did you seduce somebody in it?"

"Yup."

"So it _does_ happen."

"Of course it happens." She is matter of fact.

"Somebody who wouldn't have been seduced, in, say, a nice outfit from M&S?"

"I'd say he was fairly discerning."

She falls silent after that, apparently in some private, distant place and time of her own. Harry studies her for a while, and then he leans back and watches the road slip away underneath them. They are aiming for one of the old evacuee medical centres, just to the west of the London cordon. Jo seems to think they'll sleep there, though he can't imagine wanting to sleep at all.

"Do you enjoy it?" he says after a while, because talking is preferable to thinking. "Being a spook?"

She shrugs in silence.

"Why do you do it, then?"

"Do you enjoy cutting up dead people for a living?"

"Absolutely," says Harry with relish.

"Is that why you do it?"

"Yes."

"Not because you want to find killers, achieve social justice, that sort of thing?"

"Helpful byproduct," says Harry. "Mostly I just like cutting."

Jo looks sideways at him. "So why are we going to London, then?"

Harry opens his mouth and then shuts it. "Occasional sense of duty," he suggests at last.

"Me too," Jo says with a trace of satisfaction.

 

\- -

 

The regional office in Birmingham is, as Lucas was warned, a complete mess. The retired agent who had been put in charge had apparently disappeared, without telling anyone where or when or if he'd be back. It takes Lucas three days and a lot of tedious legwork to discover that he'd received news of his wife's body being identified at one of the evacuation hospitals. It seems that is enough of an explanation for most people to guess at the rest.

The team in Birmingham is a dozen or so people, a mix of survivors from London, those recalled from ops elsewhere, and people pulled from retirement or the police or other government departments. None of them know how to lead and it brings Lucas into his first confrontation with Richard Dolby.

"Send them up to Edinburgh," he reports on Wednesday evening, just before the phones drop out. "They're useless here. Regional offices aren't going to work until we have a central organisation running smoothly."

Dolby has countless reasons against it, but to Lucas it seems the main one, unvoiced, is an aversion to the Service being tied to Edinburgh. It's all through the media, opinions about the dangers of central government. Split up, stay safe, avoid making a new target, and other complete bollocks which is going to keep the country just as useless as it is without London. Lucas can hear Harry's disgust in his head. Maybe that's why he says what he does, against his better judgement.

Dolby is furious, and Lucas is somewhat relieved when the connection cutting out prevents him having to make a decision between damage control and just hanging up. It occurs to him, with all the trepidation he usually dismisses as irrational, that perhaps the Service wants to keep him in Birmingham for other reasons. Perhaps they want him out of the way. Maybe he hasn't been as careful as he should have been, or maybe Jo or Malcolm have let suspicion get the better of trust.

He keeps the notion circling in his mind as he drives out to the meet on Thursday afternoon. Leaving the centre of the city puts him further on edge, a hangover from driving out of London for what he was calmly aware could be the last time. He'd been out in Romford when the bombs went off, in the back of an obs van with a sullen woman from GCHQ, relaying a frustratingly impenetrable code. When they saw the smoke they had the sense to stay put until they could get through to somebody.

Dirty bombs, Harry had confirmed, sounding more angry and less afraid than he should have been. "Lucas, get the hell out, do you hear me?" But Lucas had stayed, sitting in the back of the van while the quiet street around him erupted in panic. He contacted everyone he could on a regular cycle, feeding the reports to the operations centre once it was set up, the emergency services. For a brief few hours he knew more of what had happened than anyone in the city, which still wasn't much. Then the phone network collapsed and the evacuation was starting and he got into the front of the van and drove out of London without turning back.

This is what he thinks of, driving to the suburban train station where he is meeting the man who contacted him a week ago claiming to be Zafar Younis. The man who, despite what he said to Jo, Lucas is reasonably sure is telling the truth. He doesn't quite know what to do if he is right, or for that matter if he is wrong. He is thinking of other things too.

 

\- -

 

In another life Zaf might have found it funny. How has he survived five years of the most complex and sustained double-cross of his life, while he is apparently still deluded enough to believe he'll be welcomed back to England as a hero?

The new MI5 don't want him. Of course they don't. He is a traitor.

Lucas North meets him at the station. Zaf had hoped for a more familiar face, but that doesn't mean, he tells himself, that no one has survived. He thinks that in another time, he could have liked Lucas. They sit facing each other in the run down station cafe and there is something about the other man's restlessness that he recognises. Zaf is good at sitting still, these days.

The Service is a mess, Lucas tells him. Dolby is trying to break up old teams but the fast-tracked recruits are still so hopeless that it is a full-time job to get them up to speed. Thames House is gone. Lucas looks for a moment as if he is about to go further than this potted history, but pulls himself back. Zaf, although he is disgruntled, respects the wariness. He'd be wary of himself, after all.

"You've been in Pakistan all this time?"

"Most of it. Some in India. Some in Afghanistan."

"Nobody came looking for you?"

"That doesn't happen, does it? You know how it works."

"Yes," says Lucas. "I do. And you still came back?"

"It's still my country. It was always my plan."

"Is it really your country, Zafar? After leaving you to be tortured?"

Zaf supposes it was too much to hope that his files had perished with Thames House. "Yup."

"It's hard to believe. You've been what, five years away? Playing the double agent all that time?"

"I haven't been a double agent," says Zaf simply. "I couldn't be. I worked for them. I did it to save my life. But the aim was always to come here and give you all the information, more information than you could dream of, by the way, not that it matters now. Just as soon as they trusted me enough to let me escape."

"It took that long?"

"I crossed paths with some Six operatives, though I imagine they aren't the sort to be on any books at Vauxhall Cross. Seeing as I was apparently dead, they thought I could be of use to them and got me out of my... employment. I paid my debt and then I came home."

"Black ops?" Lucas looks suspicious. "What did you do for them?"

He means, Zaf thinks, what did you do for five years working for the people we were working against. How far did you go and have you brought yourself back. It's not the kind of thing that can be asked directly, by a stranger.

"Things I'm not proud of," Zaf answers with no emotion. He stares fixedly at Lucas as if daring him to press further. "Things I had to do."

After a moment Lucas concedes the point. "Five years," he says again. "That's quite some loyalty."

"Oh give it a rest," says Zaf. "For Christ's sake. I never turned, I never have, never will, it might be the green and pleasant land or it might be my best mate and my girl in the Service, what do you want me to say? Nobody ever knows why we keep doing it, you ask your team. They just keep struggling on."

"You're probably right," says Lucas. "Your best mate and your girl?"

"I'm guessing they're dead," says Zaf. "Since you're meeting me."

"You don't seem very bothered."

"I've had a lot of time to consider it," Zaf says.

Lucas hesitates. "Jo Portman is alive."

"It's been five years, " says Zaf flatly, because he doesn't know how else to react. "I hope she's married with children. I didn't come back here for that. I didn't come back to debrief for months about all the information I've gathered. I came back here to work. So are you going to let me?"

Lucas gives him a long look. "I'll make a call. But – it's not easy. We can't afford to have to watch people."

Zaf waits.

"There are other ways. Of working. There might be things you could help us with." His voice and eyes are careful. "You're valuable, Zaf. I understand that. You're worth ten new recruits."

"Twenty," says Zaf, unsmiling. "And deniable, to boot." He knows his anger is going to show, soon, and it isn't for Lucas, it's for the Service, for Adam and Harry for dying, for everyone who let this happen and for everything that brought him back. He doesn't let himself think about the five years he has given, to nothing and to nobody. If what he has been told about Lucas North is true, he understands that at least.

 

\- -

 

Lucas leaves him money, a phone, says he'll contact Zaf when he's talked to the relevant people. Zaf nods, falling short of thanking him. It's mid-afternoon, the sun struggling through white cloud and bringing sudden colour to the street. Zaf doesn't believe in signs. He lets Lucas see him head towards the men's room, then he locks himself in a cubicle and takes out the phone.

It isn't the one Lucas gave him – that's in Lucas's pocket, and the phone in Zaf's hand is Lucas's own. He took it mainly out of habit, partly out of spite, and perhaps partly just to prove that he could. The networks have been down all day and there's no signal, but he doesn't need a signal. He thumbs through the messages with only the slightest feeling of guilt.

He starts from the end, about a week ago. Lucas is good at purging messages. Voicemail, voicemail. He assumes there's a password and doesn't bother trying to listen. A text from Jo, five days ago: _Stuck in traffic, be there in an hour._ Zaf feels like someone's taken ten tons from his shoulders. Did he think Lucas was lying about her being alive? Not really. But it's an indescribable relief all the same.

More voicemail, something about a meeting, then an unsaved number. _I think with this news she may reconsider._ Zaf frowns briefly, recognising code but not the meaning.

Jo again, a back-and-forth of cryptic instructions about something not working. _M says this end fine._ He's only partway through squashing down his hopeful imagination of who M could be, when Jo gives up in her instruction and there's Malcolm, managing to convey a sense of wearied patience in only a few words: _I did say it was experimental. Turn it off and try again, please._

Zaf finds himself laughing out loud. "Malcolm," he says, somewhat incredulously. "Hello."

He is hoping for more from Malcolm but he's reached the last, latest message, and it's an unsaved number again. _Ten-thirty._ The same unsaved number, and it's code again he's certain. How long since they used that code? He remembers Malcolm's vigorous disapproval of it in what must have been Zaf's first year at Five. Too fixed, he'd said, too simple. Also simple to remember, Zaf thinks. The dash means half an hour earlier. Ten o'clock. Now he is intrigued.

He checks the sent messages, not really expecting anything, but Lucas has been in a hurry and the meeting location is there plain as day. Coded, but Zaf knows this code too, an old one. He memorises the address.

A recorded message over the station PA brings him back to the present. Lucas should have missed the phone by now. Perhaps he isn't as good as Zaf gave him credit for, or perhaps he's not bothering to check the phone when he knows there's no signal. Zaf is suddenly uneasy. He never intended to have the phone for long and now he'll have to ditch it without getting his own back.

He moves back to the station complex, past the cafe where they were sitting. To his surprise Lucas is still there, talking with two men. Zaf hides himself further in the crowd and turns back for another look. This time he knows that something is wrong.

Lucas is arguing, the lines of his body tense and angry. The two men, dark suits, expressionless, aren't bothering to argue back. Zaf can't see the gun but he knows it's there by the sudden way Lucas drops his hands. The three of them stand and start to move towards the street exit, quickly but not hurrying. One man scopes the crowd while the other keeps his eyes on Lucas's back.

Zaf draws the phone from his pocket, wondering if Malcolm or Jo will react better to an anonymous call or one from someone who has been dead for five years. No signal. Networks still down. _Shit._

There's a car waiting outside the station. Zaf keeps moving, and manages to position himself in Lucas's eyeline as he gets into the car. From the corner of his eye he sees Lucas shake his head briefly. _No need_? He's not that optimistic. _No chance._

He shows the phone in his hand but there's no time for Lucas's reaction. The two men get in after him and the driver starts moving away before they've even shut the doors. Service? Police? The Russian bloody mafia – Zaf has no idea how to tell them apart any more. He memorises the number plate, uselessly. Local. Tells him nothing.

He has no comms, no backup, and knows no one in this entire bloody city except for the man who has just disappeared in front of him. No one in the entire _country_ , come to think of it. He's been alone for a long time, but it's here, in the country he was born in, that he is loneliest.

 

\- -

 

The medical centre is forlorn and empty.

"So, tomorrow," says Harry.

Jo's eyes flicker up from the map which she has spread carefully on the floor, and then down again. "Nervous?"

Harry finds himself nearly smiling. As blase as he's been about his determination to cross the cordon, it's only now that Jo has been through the plan with phases and backups and rationale that he's realised it's actually going to happen. "Walk in the park."

Jo's mouth twitches but she doesn't reply, only sits back against the wall, thoughtful. After a moment she feels in her bag for a packet of cigarettes, offers him one without asking.

"I don't smoke," says Harry, wondering why he cares. It's not exactly going to shorten their life expectancy. "Neither do you." For a second he dreads having to explain how he knows this, without giving away how much he has noticed about her in the week since they met. It feels more like a month, then it feels like barely an hour.

He lights up anyway, and it tastes like youth and recklessness. "Only sometimes," she answers.

"Really bad times, I suppose?"

He is sitting next to her, leaning his head against the wall, and now he turns sideways and catches a flicker of hesitation on her face.

"I suppose."

"These do count as bad times, even for a hardened spy like yourself?"

"They do."

"So how long have you been a spy?"

"Years," she says, briefly.

"Not the kind of job you just fall into."

"Actually," says Jo, "It is."

"It is?"

"What can I say?" She is deadpan. "There was this guy."

"Who romanced you into the business? Very old fashioned."

"No. He came to read my gas meter." She smiles then, the first whole smile Harry has ever seen from her.

"And _then_ he romanced you. Got to be some romance in here somewhere. In his boiler suit, I suppose?"

She actually laughs. "I suppose he did. In his own way."

"I see, so you took the little known gas company recruitment route into MI5."

"I did."

"And then what?"

"Well, here I am."

"What happened to the gas man?"

"He died."

Harry pauses. "Is that who you're looking for?"

She stiffens beside him. "No. He died a long time ago. I'm not looking for anybody, I told you. I'm looking for whatever this evidence is you're refusing to tell me about."

"Do they train it out of you? Telling the truth? Because you know, we're very likely to die in the next few days without seeing another living soul, so there's really nobody I could pass it on to."

"I'm going to get you out again," says Jo. "Don't you trust me?" And there it is again, that stubborn little shift of the jaw, the lift of the head, the fall of the hair. It's like being punched.

He doesn't know how long he is silent for, but it's too long, because Jo turns to look at him.

"Who is she, Harry?"

"What?"

"Who I remind you of? Who is she?"

Harry doesn't trust his voice. Jo is close to him, scanning his face curiously, and he has a sudden, stupid, _stupid_ urge to lean forward and kiss her, and another stupid notion that she'll understand if he does.

"Harry?" She takes the cigarette from his fingers. It has burned down to a stub.

"Sorry. Look – I – sorry."

"What for?"

"Because it's ridiculous."

"That you want to kiss me because I remind you of someone?"

Harry is backfooted into a moment of hesitation. "Yes," he says finally.

He looks at the droop of her neck, and the way her eyes are lowered, and he knows suddenly that this is what happens at the end of the world, when you're not quite sure if you're going to die in the morning. There is no shame, and no embarrassment, and she has understood this far longer that him.

"Who was she, Harry?"

"Oh, you know." He feigns a smile, a shrug. "The love of my life, for seven years, but I only just realised it."

"Too late."

Christ, she's brutal. "Yes. Too late."

She is looking at her cigarette, turning it in her fingers. She isn't smoking, he realises, just holding the cigarette loosely in her fingers, but it is so natural in her hand that he hasn't even noticed it's not lit.

"I know about too late," she says, without any emotion. "You don't want this." Without any warning, she leans across and kisses him briefly. "Don't you see? It doesn't work." Her voice is very quiet.

Harry realises he is staring at her. She isn't Nikki, and he knows this. In a way he's relieved that it's out in the open now. For a brief moment he considers she did it on purpose, settling the ground between them for what they have planned in the morning. But her grief now is genuine. He pulls himself together.

"And you know that," he says.

"I've learned."

She puts her hand over his, like an apology. Harry looks at the unlit cigarette between her fingers and wonders how bad things have to get before she smokes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone has suspicions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Co-written by londonsophie. Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/53904.html).

Gone are the days when midnight on the grid was Malcolm's private sanctuary. His late night shift tonight is accompanied by the gossiping and complaining of two girls who can't be older than twenty, sifting through GCHQ chatter for a morning report. Having failed at shutting them up with disapproving glares, Malcolm has resorted to blocking them out as best he can.

It must be the hundredth time he's played through the transmission. The worst thing about it – or the best thing, depending on his mood – is that tracing it is so complex precisely because the transmission is so low-tech. It's simply a pattern repeated from dozens of different places. Picking which one is the source might as well be a random guess.

He stops for a moment to ease his aching back. Too old for this, he thinks miserably, which cheers him up a fraction. He is surprised to notice it's nearly one in the morning. Jo will be at the cordon by now, though he doesn't know if she's planning on entering the city under cover of darkness or waiting for the morning. It's right, of course, that he doesn't know the operational details, but it does nothing to make him less worried.

The noisier of the two girls has given up and gone home. The other, who Malcolm remembers is called Rebecca, stretches at her desk and rolls her eyes elaborately. Malcolm suddenly warms to her.

"I think she's forgotten the spiel we got at training," she apologises. "You know, the 'not nine to five' thing."

Malcolm nods. "Yes. It's rarely that."

"What are you doing?"

"Working," says Malcolm.

Rebecca grins at him. "Sorry. Nosy. Got to be more interesting than this GCHQ rubbish."

"It's not all rubbish."

"That's the point, isn't it? One bloody little thing in here could be a tip-off to something going boom, and the only way to find it is to sift through all the rest. It'll be the tiniest thing, too." She looks at the reams of recordings she still has to listen to with something approaching fondness. "Got to love the needle-in-a-haystack approach."

Malcolm finds a smile twitching at the corner of his lips.

"You're old guard, right? You were here before the bombs?"

"Actually," Malcolm says, "I was retired."

She pulls a sympathetic face. "I was a Communications student. I thought spying would be exciting. But Lucas and Jo seem to be the only ones off doing anything interesting, and we don't even get told what."

Malcolm stiffens, but there's no malice in her tone. Something is tugging at the edge of his thoughts. Something she said earlier. She looks at him as if expecting a reply, but when he remains silent she sighs and puts on her headphones again. "Better get back to it. That needle isn't going to find itself."

The tiniest thing. "Rebecca," he says suddenly.

She pulls off the headphones, surprised. "Yes?"

"Why would someone repeat a transmission through many different locations?"

"To hide the source?"

"Aside from that."

She frowns. "Well, to amplify the signal perhaps. If the original transmission was too weak to be heard."

Malcolm turns to his screen, starting to type. "The weakest signal," he mutters, almost to himself. "It has to be the weakest one."

"What are you looking for?"

He pulls up the original analysis, finding the weakest threads which he'd discarded and starting to narrow them down. It takes a few false starts and ten or so minutes of searching, but when he finally sits back in his chair Rebecca is still watching him.

"The source," he answers belatedly.

"And have you found it?"

Malcolm stares at his screen, hardly daring to believe it. "I think I have," he says quietly.

 

\- -

 

Zaf spends a restless night in a tiny motel room, assessing his options. He has no ties to Lucas and no reason to help him, but he can't shake the feeling he was involved somehow. Was Lucas in trouble for meeting him? Had the two men been shadowing them the whole time, listening to their conversation?

He dismisses this idea countless times. He hadn't hidden himself that well in the crowd and no one was scanning faces looking for him. He thinks of the other meeting, the anonymous number in Lucas's phone, the coded messages.

At six he gives up trying to sleep and heads out into the freezing morning. He is angry now, blaming Lucas for it. He has enough problems of his own without having to worry about other people's. When the signal comes back he'll call Jo, that's what he'll do. He'll get to Edinburgh somehow. Get himself un-dead, sweep the whole last five years into a box, and make himself useful. That's what he came here to do.

Having made the decision, he now has an excruciatingly unspecified length of time to waste. He eats, not remembering what it tastes like, and sees a movie, not remembering what it is. People stare at him with open suspicion and he nearly laughs.

There's no river here. He walks around meaningless streets for a while, doubling back as if trying to lose a tail. He's been trying all day to picture Jo but her face is infuriatingly distant in his memories. He remembers what he said to Lucas, _I hope she's married with children_ , and for an instant he can picture her long-haired and massively pregnant. It's enough to make him smile. That's more than he should have hoped for, isn't it? They could've all been gone, everyone he used to know, his life, Thames House, the street he grew up on. But there's Jo.

It's the most morbid and desperate of comforts, but Zaf's learned to take what he can get. He checks his watch. It's nearly ten. He is already heading for Lucas's meet before he admits it to himself that it's more than just curiosity.

It's five-past before he spots the waiting man, taking far too long with a coffee in the chill wind which has picked up. Ten-past before he's certain. He approaches, one hand still tight around the phone in his pocket. The man's gaze skates over him blankly before Zaf's path is too direct to be ignored.

"I'm sorry, but – "

Zaf sits on the bench next to him. "I saw what happened yesterday," he says without preamble.

"Saw what?"

Zaf has a moment in which to decide whether the man was instrumental or ignorant. He hasn't survived this long without trusting his gut feeling.

"A car," he explains succinctly. "Two thugs in suits, professionals, not sure whose. A gun although I can't be sure. No way I could follow them."

The man stares at him for a long second. "Who the fuck are you?" he asks coolly, as if he hasn't heard Zaf speak.

"A friend," Zaf says, fairly certain he wouldn't be introduced as such. He slides Lucas's phone across the bench in offering. The man checks the messages, pausing as he recognises his own. _No signal_ , Zaf sees upside-down.

"He gave you this?"

His voice is different now, eyes narrowed, a hard edge as he assesses the consequences of Zaf's story.

"The message was from you, wasn't it? _I think with this news she may reconsider._ What news? Who's _she?_ Who was it took Lucas?"

The man is furious at the questions, and more than a little disgusted Zaf thinks – at his own carelessness or at Lucas's he can't be sure. Zaf didn't expect answers but he knows now he can't leave without getting them. He remembers the vintage of the code.

"I know Malcolm," he says quietly. "Harry. I worked under him for three years."

"Good for you." The reply is mechanical but a flash of the eyes give him away.

"And Ruth Evershed," Zaf presses. "Adam Carter. Colin, and Sam. Have I hit any buttons yet?" Knowing he's hit every single one.

 

\- -

 

In the event, crossing the cordon is absolutely without incident. Jo and Harry zip themselves up into bodybags, wedge themselves into the cardboard that does for coffins now, and wait in the van. It's driven in by men who apparently do it often enough to laugh, and smoke, and joke about the stiffs, and not check the back once. The roadblock waves them through with a shout and thump on the side which makes Harry jump.

After an uncomfortable hour, he feels the van being parked, the ratchet of the handbrake, and the drivers go off, yelling instructions at each other. He hears Jo sit up and unzip herself, and before his numb hands can fumble for the pull, she's opened the bag over his face and she's smiling at him.

"Did you fall asleep in there?"

He sits up. "Not exactly."

Jo laughs and turns around, trying the back door of the van. It is locked, and Harry watches her pick it expertly, twenty seconds, maybe thirty, and then the lock snaps back. She looks over her shoulder and grins at him, and he realises incredulously that she is enjoying herself.

"You _like_ this," he says, trying to disentangle the bodybag from around his waist.

"So should you." She starts turning the door handle, carefully.

"What?"

"Empathy for your patients."

"They're not exactly _patients_ ," grumbles Harry, dragging the bodybag from one foot and then the other.

"Are you ready?"

"All right, all right." He comes to stand next to her.

She opens the door slowly, a crack first, a look, then a little wider and another, longer look.

"Well?"

She looks as though she is about to speak, and then she shrugs her shoulders, and pushes the door wide.

"See for yourself."

 

\- -

 

They move around for a while, until the man is sure they aren't being tailed. Zaf's attempts at finding out what's going on are resolutely ignored, but he follows with grim determination. He's owed an explanation and persistence is the only way he knows to get one.

Eventually it pays off. The man whirls round, all cold anger and reminding Zaf suddenly and painfully of Adam. "Why the fuck would I tell you who I am? If Lucas has been arrested it's because of the information I've been passing him. The next thing they're going to do is find his source. Me. I don't intend to let that happen and it'd be a lot fucking easier if you pissed off."

With that he turns pointedly back and keeps walking.

"Oh come on," Zaf says idly. "I already know your name is Tom Quinn."

 _That_ gets a response. Just a tiny hesitation, but enough for both of them to know that there's no point denying it. For a moment Zaf thinks Tom is going to hit him.

"Did Lucas tell you?"

"No," Zaf says, with the impression that Lucas definitely shouldn't have. "You used to be Section D. You didn't accuse me of being dead when I told you my name, so you've been out of the service a long while. And I used my amazing powers of deduction to work out that you probably aren't Zoe."

Tom starts walking again, calmer suddenly, or perhaps just thinking of ways he can kill Zaf. They're heading to quieter streets, and Tom obviously has a destination in mind. Zaf keeps following.

"I suppose they're all dead now," Tom says presently, as if the conversation of earlier never ended. "Section D."

Zaf is silent for a moment, unsure if the truce is real, and considering how much news is his to share. "Malcolm's alive. I don't know about the others. But Ruth got out years ago. Out of the service, I mean. Out of England. She's safe."

"Your information's old. Ruth was back."

Zaf could have kicked himself. Tom has been in contact with Lucas – of course he would have already asked what has happened to his old Section.

"Well," Zaf says neutrally. "Who knows then."

"You said you were Five."

The anger of before is gone, but Zaf's sharp enough to recognise an interrogation when he hears it. "I've been away a long while," he explains, with a trace of bitterness. "I've just been re-recruited."

A lie, but there's nothing to disprove it. To his surprise Tom laughs.

"Lucky you. They didn't want me."

Somewhere in the back of his mind Zaf realises how small his own chances must be, despite Lucas's promises to try. "Why?" he asks.

"I broke some unwritten rules. Lucas deigns to take my information but he won't have me on the books."

 _I think with this news she may reconsider. She_ being the Service, of course – old-fashioned and pompous enough to irritate Zaf. "What have you found out?" he asks again.

Tom shakes his head, still smiling, but with no humour. "That was for Lucas."

"Well, I'm all you've got."

No response. This isn't the kind of spying Zaf expected to be doing on his return, but really, what did he think it would be? The glorious good old days, him and Adam and Jo and the only targets were on the other side?

Tom stops suddenly, producing a set of keys and unlocking a car parked on the side of the street. Zaf gets in uninvited, and they drive slowly out of the centre, checking periodically for a signal.

"The army," Tom says after nearly ten minutes of silence, "are running a lot of operations into London."

He's undercover in the army – that, Zaf thinks, makes a lot of sense. They obviously shared none of Five's reservations in enlisting people with shady pasts, but then he supposes Tom Quinn's legend and invented rank means he doesn't have a shady past any more. It must be child's play to create a legend these days. Initial suspicion quickly excused when the usual avenues of investigation are gone – records destroyed, personnel lost.

"I thought London was cordoned off," Zaf says, playing resolutely dumb. "Ring of steel, radiation zone, certain death beyond, do not cross."

"Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds," Tom continues, deadpan. "Don't be stupid. They man the cordon. They know where the bombs went off and where the radiation zones are."

Zaf holds a pause. "What kind of operations?"

"Oh, the investigation. Collecting evidence, bodies. Apparently they'll be starting the cleanup soon. But there are more than that. Vague things. Unrecorded, or repeats of what's already been done."

"What do you suspect?"

"A cover-up," Tom says simply.

"Covering _what_ up?" Zaf can't think of a single answer to his question which wouldn't be bad news.

Tom pauses. "I don't know," he says at last.

"But you suspect."

"You really don't know when to shut up, do you?"

"There's no point keeping me half-informed."

"It might save your irritating neck."

"I'm pretty good at looking after my neck," says Zaf. "Trust me."

"I've told you what you need to know."

Zaf knows when he is beaten. "Well, if you got the information to Thames – to Five, then. Once they know, there's no point taking us out."

Tom dismisses this with a quick gesture. "I think they already know. Or at least someone high up knows. You saw what happened to Lucas."

Things start falling into place in Zaf's head. "You think that was someone in Five? Because of information Lucas got from you?"

Tom shrugs, aggressive, silent. "Five, Six, army. The military umbrella is back up, isn't it? All united for the security of the nation."

"Well, we need to get to Edinburgh ourselves then. Contact Jo, Malcolm. They'll listen."

"It'll put them in danger."

"So what's _your_ plan, strolling in to London and finding out single-handed?"

"Something like that."

Zaf snorts incredulously. "But you said yourself that whoever took Lucas will be looking all over for his source now. Your cover's blown."

"Not yet." Tom pulls into a side street and stops the car. "It's been nice reminiscing. The central station's a block that way. Go home to Five. Do what you can about Lucas but I doubt you'll get far. Say hi to Malcolm for me. I need to do this alone."

He hands back Lucas's phone, and Zaf takes it with barely concealed anger. "You think I _want_ to be in on your ridiculous suicide plan? You'll be found out before you even reach London."

Tom shrugs again, somehow back in his impenetrable calm. "Things have changed. News travels slowly."

"You'd better hope it does," Zaf says as he gets out of the car. He clenches his fist around the phone in his pocket and is halfway to the station before he thinks to check it again.

There's a signal. He stares at it for a moment before finding Jo's number with shaking fingers.

Network busy. Of course it is. He tries again, hurrying on to the station, and it seems every person around him is suddenly on the phone. Most are cursing recorded messages and glaring at the few who have been inexplicably granted access. Zaf is just about to shout at them all in the name of national security when he sees the new voicemail messages.

There's no password required after all, and the messages reflect it, anonymous and vague. He skips the first two unfamiliar voices. Jo's voice, even as he is half-expecting it, is enough to make him need to lean against the nearest wall.

 _Lucas, I can't get through to you obviously. It's Thursday afternoon. Thought you'd be back by now._ She sounds frightened, trying to be casual. _I'm going home for a while. See you when I get back – I hope you get this._

Going home. She means London, Zaf realises immediately, she means London. He doesn't even think. He just turns around and starts walking back the way he's come.

 

\- -

 

Malcolm has a graphic on his screen reminiscent of the early nineties, with mains power, phone networks and data connections overlaid across the country in large brightly-coloured pixels. He watches the phones flicker back online in the Midlands as the broadband connection dies in the east.

His phone rings. "Lucas," he answers, trying not to sound too relieved.

"Not quite, Malcolm, sorry."

Malcolm holds the phone a little tighter. " _Zaf_."

There's a startled pause, as if Zaf was expecting a long task of convincing. Then he laughs. "Hello. How've you been?"

"I _knew_ it was you," Malcolm says joyously. "I knew it! Where are you? Where's Lucas?"

"I need to speak to Jo."

Malcolm's heart sinks, but he's used to happiness being short-lived. "She's not here."

"She's already gone? I got her message."

"Yesterday afternoon," Malcolm confirms. "I've no way to get in touch with her until she – finds a way."

"What's she doing there? What's happening?"

Malcolm pauses, and Zaf is suddenly guarded. "Can you talk?"

Malcolm looks at the graphic on his screen again. Even he couldn't get a trace in that mess. "Yes." He sighs. "She's been getting information from someone with the official investigation, if on rather an unofficial tangent. And then I picked up a transmission. Lucas said he'd – is he with you?"

"What transmission?"

Malcolm closes his eyes. "I couldn't trace the source. I think I have now but it still doesn't make sense."

"Malcolm, _what transmission?_ "

"I think it's from Thames House," Malcolm says finally, reluctantly. "But I can't understand why it would need to be amplified. None of the systems I set up there are responding. I've no way to contact Jo – Where are you, Zaf? What do you need to tell Jo?"

There is a long pause. Malcolm wonders if he's lost the connection.

"The army are covering something up," Zaf says slowly. "I think there are people alive in London." He sounds like he's just realised it, and isn't yet sure whether it's good or bad.

Malcolm assimilates this for a minute, then opens his mouth and closes it again, and finds he isn't sure if it's good or bad either.

 

\- -

 

Jo and Harry wait inside a restaurant for the army men to return. There is broken crockery all over the floor, a rotting smell from the kitchen, and Jo wrinkles her nose, wondering that they couldn't've picked a better place to hide. But she'd prefer that the smell is rotting food rather than rotting anything else.

Presently they hear voices and watch the van driving away, loaded with bodies. "Now what?" she asks.

"Now I find some bodies from places they've been instructed not to take them from," Harry says with purpose. "Then I find out how they died."

"What are you looking for? Are you going to tell me yet?"

"I'll tell you when I've found it. _If_ I find it."

She follows him around for a bit, through deserted streets and into the odd house or shop or building he decides by some secret sign is of interest. Everything is curiously intact, as if the whole population has upped and left – which, of course, is exactly what happened. But there are children's bicycles on front steps, groceries in cars. As if people expected to come back. Jo almost wishes they could go to the bomb sites, just so she can see some damage to justify the silence.

Their roles seem to have reversed now that the danger of discovery is past and only gory dissection is ahead. For all that she's been close to death and destruction, Jo can't be comfortable with it the way Harry is. She suspects he is enjoying getting to show her up.

"You'll do," he says cheerily, when he has examined and discarded the few bodies they find. He glances up at Jo. "I'm going to cut him up. Do you want to watch?"

"This might surprise you," Jo says, "but I'd rather not." She checks her watch. "How long will you be?"

"A few hours. There are some other locations I want to check out."

"I'm going to Thames House."

"Is that where your people were?"

She is momentarily surprised that he doesn't know the building, but she supposes the Security Services really are off the radar for most people. She arranges a time for them to meet and points out Thames House on the map. There's something about his complete lack of fear that makes her nervous.

"Call me if there are any problems." She lays one of the tiny radios Malcolm has given her in front of him.

"What's this?"

"Radio. White button for on, black button to transmit. Because of the phone networks."

"They should be fine _here_."

Jo understands what he means. The phone networks up North have not been able to cope with the influx of evacuees. But here there is blast damage, and the thought of being out of contact with Harry makes her cold with anxiety. She looks at her phone. No bars. She holds it in front of Harry, who is already laying out his things, a neat row of saws and scalpels.

"Use the radio."

"All right," says Harry absently.

"Remember the safe zones."

"Yup."

Jo gives up on him, scans the street briefly and makes off in the direction of the river.

"Be careful," he calls to her back.

"You too." She looks back at him, crouched on the pavement.

"Be more careful than me," he says without looking up from his work. "You promised to get me out, remember?"

"I remember," Jo says, turning abruptly away.

 

\- -

 

It isn't difficult to pick up Tom's trail. After he's made a few requests of Malcolm, Zaf has a fairly good idea of how the army are running the cordon, and of the operations centre in Watford. "Everything goes through there," Malcolm had explained. "They're storing all the evidence for eventual decontamination." It is, quite clearly, where Tom is headed.

Zaf ditches the phone, though it is difficult to part with the recording of Jo's voice. He imagines Adam giving him a severe talking-to for letting sentimentality compromise good operational practice – Adam who used to call his wife in earshot of his target, using his cover as an excuse to be sleazy.

It makes him smile. He's stopped himself from thinking of Adam and Jo for so many years, frightened he would start blaming them for abandoning him, or that he would dream of them and give something away in his sleep. Now Adam is dead and Jo is in danger but in Zaf's head, it is as if they have come to life after five years of silence.

He steals a car, and then another phone. It would nearly be enjoyable if not for the purpose. He calls Malcolm.

"Have you found anything on Lucas?"

"No one will talk to me," Malcolm says. He sounds disapproving, as if he had thought Zaf was making up the story of Lucas's arrest and is blaming him for it being true. "He's been arrested under one of the new laws, but no one will tell me which one, or under what charge, or where he is."

"Keep trying."

Zaf makes a few more requests, having to constantly remind himself that Malcolm is in fucking _Scotland_ and not behind his old desk at Thames House, with Harry's office just over there and a million government record systems at his beck and call. "Any requests for me?" he finishes, slightly apologetic.

"Yes," says Malcolm. "Look after Jo, please."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are discoveries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Co-written by londonsophie. Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/54344.html).

For the first part of the drive, Zaf entertains the idea of just not stopping – driving straight across the M25 and hoping to hit one of the unmanned sections of the cordon. By the time he reaches the first roadblock he's bored of that particular fantasy and has moved on to more realistic strategies.

The traffic crawls towards the flashing lights of the roadblock. Zaf, who doesn't have authorisation to be alive let alone to drive a car around the country, calmly reverses to a side street and takes a detour back to reconnect with the motorway.

The operations centre is smaller than he'd imagined, a nondescript string of office buildings on the far outskirts of the city, originally requisitioned as a sort of admin centre for the evacuation, Malcolm had told him. The security is military, but as far as he can tell the setup isn't. He drives past once, but there isn't time for reconnaissance. It's already two o'clock and he'll have to trust that the drive from Birmingham has been enough time for Malcolm to do what he needs to do. He circles and heads straight for the gate. Malcolm would disapprove. Adam, he likes to think, would be proud.

Zaf hasn't the up-to-date knowledge of the investigation that he would have were he back on the Grid, but he knows like everybody knows that four of the eight bombs in London were cars. When he can't produce authorisation at the gate, he fully expects the reaction he gets.

"But you're meant to be _expecting_ me," he says a little wildly, as he is escorted roughly from the car and searched for weapons. "Okay, I'm sorry, I don't want to blow up your stupid operations centre. Let me speak to someone."

No one seems to know what to do with him. The soldiers taking him through the building are following protocol, but he can tell that some of them believe his story and are uneasy with treating him like a prisoner. He tries to capitalise. "This is ridiculous. Get someone I can speak to. Who's in charge?"

It's half an hour before his request is heard, and by then he doesn't have to try too hard to pretend to be frustrated and nervous. They've had more than enough time to call people involved with the investigation all over the country, and find no record of him.

He's shown to an empty room in the main building, and directed to sit in a chair. A moment later a man enters. Balding, severe in a finance sort of way, shirt and tie – no ranks here, which is just another thing to make Zaf uneasy.

"I liaise with the investigation team in Edinburgh," he says politely.

Zaf gives a name, the same he gave Malcolm, knowing that his own will at best turn up a death certificate. He plays the frustrated subordinate.

"Look, what is all this about? I don't know why you haven't got my authorisation. What am I supposed to do, wait here until Edinburgh can fax through another?" He tries a laugh and comes off nervous, which is exactly what he wants. The man straightens his back, irritated at Zaf's attempt to be casual.

"London is a restricted zone. Only certain units are allowed access, only to the known safe zones and for strictly limited lengths of time."

"I know that," Zaf says. "Believe me, I'm not going to hang around a second longer than I have to."

"You're not going to have any seconds at all."

"I told you. I should have the authorisation."

"From whom? To do what?"

Zaf hesitates. He was hoping to at least have a hint of how much they knew before revealing his cards, but there's no reason for someone in his assumed position to withhold information. "There are people inside the cordon who shouldn't be there," he says finally.

The man narrows his eyes. "How do you already know that? We've only just received reports of the cordon being breached."

Zaf tries another laugh. "Not my problem, mate. Have you seen the state of the communications infrastructure lately? It's like the middle ages."

"Who are they? How did they get through? What are they doing?"

He's not military, Zaf realises. Some sort of bureaucrat, or an official whitewasher. Not trained in interrogation.

"I don't know. It doesn't matter. They belong to the investigation and the chiefs are adamant that they be found and escorted back to Edinburgh, unharmed, before they cause trouble for everyone. Those are my orders."

"Why aren't you carrying authorisation?"

It's nearly too easy to play this role. Zaf swears, and makes to kick the chair. "I was _told_ not to. I was _told_ to be deniable, so this whole fucking mess can be cleaned up as quickly as possible. I was _told_ you would know that."

The door opens suddenly and Tom enters. He gives Zaf the briefest glance, blank-faced, but Zaf has no illusions about how furious he is.

"I'll deal with this."

The first man hesitates. "He knows about the breach," he says, as if requesting to be allowed to stay and listen. His dislike for Tom is obvious.

"Yes," says Tom patiently. "I'll take him to the other building. It's better for questioning. I suspect he is who he says he is, but let's not be in a hurry to chase up his authorisation."

 

\- -

 

Malcolm spends the afternoon with absolutely no news from Jo, Lucas or Zaf. A year ago he couldn't have even imagined being cut off from his entire team for so long. He's still trying to deal with some of the things Zaf has asked of him, and even a rare deployment of angry words hasn't stopped him from being continually interrupted by other people.

His desk phone rings. He is tempted to ignore it, but after all it could be news and suddenly he is apprehensive.

"Yes?"

"Well, that answers my first question," the caller says.

"What question?" Malcolm asks. He recognises the voice but can't place it.

"I asked to speak to someone about Dr Harry Cunningham, and I was put through to you. Hardly very secret, is it."

Malcolm is silent.

"DCI Siobhan Clarke," she introduces herself. "I know your people make a habit of avoiding my people, but I think this is an occasion when we need to share."

It's against all his better judgement and most of his instinct, but Malcolm finds himself agreeing. Half an hour later he is drinking coffee with the Deputy Head of the official investigation team. She doesn't ask his name, only his position. His obvious long history with the service seems to meet with her approval.

"So there's an official MI5 operation into one of my senior pathologists," she says with some amusement. "I would have thought you'd better things to do with your time."

She's warmer in person, small and blonde and plainly dressed, but Malcolm is under no illusions that he needs to tread carefully. He wants to ask who it was gave away that there was an op, but there's probably no point. It'll be someone new and flustered and easily convinced by authoritative titles.

"He's been asking a lot of questions of the investigation," Malcolm says instead. "It's made some people curious as to why."

She all but rolls her eyes. "He's an irritating perfectionist, that's why. To be honest I don't care about the infinite detail of how every single person died. I care about keeping enough of a semblance of order and procedure in this chaos that one day we'll be allowed to prosecute the hell out of someone."

She says it like she is daring Malcolm to disagree with her. He nods in reply. She folds her arms, and suddenly this has gone from a discussion to an interrogation. "So where is he?" she asks.

"I'm sorry?"

The accusing look again. Malcolm meets it stiffly, surprised to find he can still feel insulted. "As you mentioned," he says politely, "we do have other things to do. Dr Cunningham wasn't under surveillance."

"But I think you know where he is."

"What makes you think that?"

"The woman who was driving the car."

Malcolm says nothing.

"You're not the only ones who have access to CCTV, you know. When it turned out no one knew where he was this morning, I did some digging. He got in a car with a woman yesterday and no one's seen him since. The woman looked very like someone who approached me the other day asking if I'd heard of any transmissions from London. She was quite convincing. I was convinced. Now I'm not."

She takes a sip of coffee, which Malcolm can smell over his own untouched cold tea. Grudgingly he finds himself wondering why she hasn't been poached by the Service, but she clearly has the full quota of police antagonism for people who can tap phones and search premises without warrants. Two halves of him are waging a monumental war about what to do.

"So," she finishes, setting the mug down, "have you had him killed for stirring trouble?"

Malcolm has never been a field agent, but he has had nearly thirty years experience in making split-second rational decisions from behind a desk. If what Zaf has suspected is happening in London is true – if what Lucas and Jo and the pathologist have suspected is true – Malcolm knows he can't deal with it himself. He clasps his hands in front of him and thinks of Harry Pearce.

"There might be something I can do. First I need you to do something for me."

 

\- -

 

Tom and the armed guard lead Zaf through a maze of corridors. Zaf guesses that better for questioning means no CCTV, and there is a bizarre moment when he isn't sure if Tom is planning on talking to him in private or torturing him.

Tom dismisses the guard with instruction to fetch the appropriate people, and shuts the door. "Right. You've five minutes to explain what the _fuck you're doing_."

"I need to get to London," Zaf says, dropping all his bluster and indignation. "I need you to get me through."

"It's going to take all my negotiating powers not to get you _shot_ , Zaf. Who do you think I am? The boss of this whole setup?"

You're acting like it, Zaf thinks. "I know you're not who _these_ people think you are," he shoots back. "Do you want me to tell them? Blow your legend?"

Tom laughs, which is more frightening than his anger. Zaf is not intimidated. It takes a lot to intimidate him these days, which he suspects Tom realises.

"I don't have a legend. I'm ex-MI5, I have military training, I'm very fucking good at running operations. The army took up where Five are still busy holding ridiculous grudges. You can't threaten me with that."

Zaf just stares at him. He doesn't have a lot of other options. Very few other options, he realises absently, with the kind of detachment that used to scare him. The consequences of failing here somehow aren't as terrible as the consequences of doing nothing.

"But I can threaten you with telling them you've been passing information to Lucas," Zaf says coolly. "I'm right that they don't know that, aren't I?"

Tom glares, but before he can reply there are two more men at the door, a Lieutenant and a Sergeant, both in uniform. Zaf guesses these are the people who have been searching for Jo. The Sergeant is subordinate to Tom and Zaf is briefly impressed.

Tom questions Zaf for their benefit, and they have questions of their own, but they are things Zaf couldn't answer even if he wanted to. How did they breach the cordon? Where specifically are they headed? Where specifically are they from? What have they been working on in the investigation? Who else knows about them?

Zaf plays his role. "I don't know any of this. When they're safely back in Edinburgh I have assurance you'll get all the information you want, unrestricted. I'm not the one who's done something wrong here. Why do you even need to _wait_ for my authorisation?"

It's a long shot, but their upright dismissal of the idea only confirms the existence of a cover-up. Something is happening in London and it is of vital importance that no one from the official investigation find out.

Zaf knows he's running out of time. Eventually the questions stop and Tom confers with the two officers in low voices. Zaf can't hear what they're saying, but Tom tosses him a warning expression and he knows they're about to call it through to Edinburgh.

"Oh for god's sake," he interrupts, "If it'll help, I know about the people."

Everyone is immediately on edge. "What people?" the Lieutenant barks.

Part of Zaf is still hoping he's wrong, even as he knows he's risking his life on the bluff. "The people inside the cordon. The people you failed to evacuate in time who are now dying, exactly as they would have died anyway."

He recites the story with false nonchalance, trying to sound like it doesn't bother him. Just following orders. This is the last place I want to be. It makes me sick to even think of going near London and I'll ignore anything and everything if it means I can get far away again soon.

A silence, so long Zaf is tempted to confess something else just to break it.

"That's quite a story for someone of your clearance level," Tom says calmly.

Zaf sighs. "I have clearance. As I explained. I don't know why you haven't got a record of it."

The Lieutenant shakes his head. "I don't know where you're getting this information. It's tiresome and ridiculous. We'll contact Edinburgh about your authorisation and put this all to rest."

Zaf feels sick. He bought himself a few minutes but now it seems he's bought himself a death warrant, because they aren't just going to contact Edinburgh now – they're going to contact the highest authority masterminding this whole cover-up, and it's going to be instantly obvious that there's no way Zaf should know about it.

He glances to Tom, keeping the desperation from his face because he's meant to be relieved at this decision. Tom stares back. _Out of my hands._

As if on cue, the door opens and the balding bureaucrat enters, red with anger. He glares at the two soldiers but can't seem to look at Tom.

"I just received a call from the deputy head in Edinburgh," he says gruffly. "Accept my apologies, but I trust you understand why we had to doubt you." He turns to Tom. "Your unit is to escort him to the cordon at 1700 hours."

The Lieutenant narrows his eyes at the news. "You neglected to mention that your clearance was _that_ high up."

"You wouldn't listen," Zaf says, attempting to muster some indignation while every muscle in his body is limp with relief.

 

\- -

 

Crawling down the M1, deafened by the engine but surrounded by miles of empty silence, Zaf listens to the reports coming in of the breach. They've found evidence of how they got in, and have reports of where they might be headed, but so far no sight of them. Malcolm has chosen his information well.

Tom has been occupied with orders, and when he slides down to sit beside Zaf he doesn't even look at him.

"You knew about the people in London," Zaf says. It's not a question.

Tom nods. "I was briefed last week. I thought it was something about survivors but I didn't have the proof until then. I was trying to tell Lucas," he adds, almost an apology. He's quieter now, and looks tired, the realisation of the truth sobering his anger.

Zaf wants to ask what the hell is going on that there are people in a supposedly evacuated city, with the full knowledge of the army who were meant to get them all out. But he can think of a dozen reasons, and he isn't sure what that says about him. He keeps silent.

"These idiots who've breached the cordon," Tom asks after a while, "You know them, I presume? This is some sort of rescue mission?"

Zaf doesn't answer straight away. Tom, surprisingly, gives him a nod of something like respect.

"My colleague," Zaf offers presently, now that things seem to have changed between them. "Her name's Jo."

 _Colleague_ seems a ridiculous choice of word after everything that's happened, but Tom nods like he understands.

"She'd have been killed," Zaf continues. "If they'd found her in the city, messing around in their dirty secret, it'd be a shot to the head. And she would have been found." He feels a flicker of guilt for his lack of faith in Jo, but he needs to be realistic. "At least now she has a chance," he finishes.

"She's just gambling with a different death," says Tom morosely. "But you can stop worrying about the shot to the head. I've made sure the patrol is going to concentrate on the areas they're reported to have been headed. I'm guessing if we go the other way we'll find them."

Zaf nods.

"Who's with her?"

"Somebody from the official investigation. Not one of us."

"Christ almighty," says Tom. "She must be insane."

"Slightly reckless," suggests Zaf.

"Trained by you, was she?"

"By Adam Carter, actually."

Tom grins. "I should have guessed," he says.

 

\- -

 

When Jo reaches Thames House it looks deceptively whole. Suddenly the empty streets are only because it's early Sunday morning, and Jo's pain is only tiredness after a long night finishing a report. She stops, angry with herself. It was a stupid idea to come here.

The first surprise is the door, which is locked. Jo tries her pass, and then she flips open the emergency panel and enters the Section D code. The door stays firmly shut. She steps back and looks at it. Nothing appears to have been tampered with. Maybe there is an emergency routine which locks it. She looks it over again, more carefully, and then she realises that something is looking back.

It's a CCTV camera, minute, rigged into the space where the pass-reader used to be. No wonder she can't get in. It takes her a minute to realise that somebody must have been alive in Thames House to rig that up.

Could still be alive. Suddenly she is nervous. She bends down and shows her face to the camera, carefully, side and then front.

The door clicks open.

 

\- -

 

Nikki's flat is as it has always been, which is unexpected. There are at least thirty pairs of shoes lined up in neat shelved rows in the hallway, and the hatstand is covered in coloured scarves. Somehow this tells Harry what he needs to know, and there is no surprise or fear finding her lying in bed. It is nothing but inevitable. He sits down on the floor by the bed, quite empty and blank.

He considers first the scene of death, because he owes this to Nikki. She has died in bed, warmly dressed. Beside her there is a bottle of water, a pack of rehydration salts, codeine. She knew, he thinks, she knew that she would die here on her own. She got into this bed and she knew she would not get out.

He considers cause of death, just as he has done so many times with her at his side. He knows the little tells of radiation poisoning now, the skin, the eyes, the sloughing mouth. Even after this many days, it is apparent. He thinks in a detached way about dosage and exposure. She would have been near Waterloo, just getting in to work. She would have had quite some time, days, weeks. Why was she here? She should have been evacuated into one of the emergency care centres around London. Did she choose to stay behind?

It is bizarrely quiet. He imagines her lying here. Perhaps she thought about him. She would have known that he was safe out of London. She hadn't wanted to come to the conference because of her case. He hadn't even tried very hard to convince her. He thinks about how she looked when she said no, head down at her desk, impatient, hair unwinding out of her pins. Dusk is falling outside, and the room grows dark whilst he makes himself remember the way she looked, in the cutting room, sitting in the office, perched up on a barstool in one of those ridiculous pairs of shoes, hectoring policemen, standing in the doorway of his flat and smiling at him. He can count the times he could have told her that he loved her, but then she knew that really. He does it anyway.

He wakes to the sound of the radio transmitter crackling into life, and finds himself leaning against Nikki's bed in semi darkness.

"Jo."

"Where are you?" Harry barely recognises her voice. He thinks perhaps she has been crying, but perhaps it is just the radio.

"Near Notting Hill," he says. "Sorry."

She pauses, and he knows he hasn't pulled it off.

"Harry..."

"She's dead," he says, cutting her off.

"I'm sorry."

"I was expecting it."

"Not the same as knowing it," says Jo, with certainty.

"I suppose not."

"Are you still there? With her?" He nods, forgetting she can't see him, but apparently she doesn't need an answer. "Look, I need you to come to Thames House. I'll explain when you get here. You've got what evidence you need?"

"Yes."

She pauses. "Leave now. Come on. Get up and walk out of the room, Harry."

"It doesn't seem right to leave her."

"You're a _pathologist_ ," says Jo without a trace of sympathy. "Are you telling me you're sentimental about bodies now? Get off the floor."

"How do you know I'm on the floor?" he protests, but he gets to his feet.

"I just know," she says. "Go on."

Harry looks behind him at Nikki on the bed but he's not sure what he's looking for. There's nothing to see except the mass of tangled blonde hair on the pillow.

"Harry," says Jo firmly. "Go."

"I'm going." He finds himself creeping down the stairs, as if he might wake the woman in the upstairs room. The scarves on the hatstand exude her curious scent, which makes him stop again.

"Harry," says Jo warningly, and he realises she must be listening to the creak of the boards under his tread.

"I'm leaving." He reaches out and takes a scarf, one that looks familiar. He roots around in the bowl on her hall table for her spare keys, as he's seen her do so many times. He can't leave her in an unlocked house. That's when he sees the notebook, laid neatly amidst the post and newspapers and lipsticks. Later he almost convinces himself that she left it there on purpose, but she couldn't have expected him. He picks it up, and reads the first page. It takes him a little while to understand, and he reads it twice more before he slides the notebook into his pocket with the scarf.

"I'm going to take a detour," he says to Jo. "It won't take long."


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Co-written by londonsophie. Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/55117.html).

Jo puts down the radio and glances at the clock on Adam's old desk. For an odd moment she is surprised that it's still working, as if time should have frozen in here. It will be dark soon.

"We need to get out of here."

Tariq is sitting on a box, watching her with a dazed expression. She's fairly sure he hasn't taken in a word of what she's said. They've only just managed to stop crying between the three of them, though Jo isn't sure some of it wasn't laughing. Now he seems to rouse himself. "All this has to come with us."

"What's that?"

Tariq makes a vague gesture. "Oh, everything."

"What _everything?_ "

He looks at her like she is possibly joking. "Everything that's important. Do you think we've been twiddling our thumbs all this time?"

"Of course not," Jo says, impatient. She doesn't say that's because she had thought they were dead. She turns to Ruth, who is standing by her desk, sorting through pages of notes. "What do you mean? What have you been doing?"

Ruth glances up. "What? Oh. You know. The bombs. Case notes, analysis, investigation."

"Investigation," echoes Jo.

"Well, we didn't have a lot else to do." Ruth is quite calm after her initial emotion, which only makes Jo more worried. "Why did we miss it all? All those bombs, the planning, it should have triggered every warning bell, every surveillance system. It should have been red hot. It could only have been deliberately missed. With inside cooperation."

Jo looks again at the boxes. They are records from every section, eyes-only files from Registry, decades-old case notes, recordings, tapes. On top there are neat files of notes. Ruth's handwriting.

She wonders quite seriously if Ruth and Tariq have gone mad. It's been a long time, just the two of them, on a diet of emergency rations and paranoia. Then she looks at the boxes again. If ever two people were to work out what had happened, they would need a lot of time. A lot of resources. Experience. Phenomenal brains.

She pulls over the nearest box and sits down on top of it. "Start at the beginning," she says.

 

\- -

 

They were in the sub-basement archives, Tariq begins, looking for something that predated the computerised registry. "The librarian went up when the alarm sounded."

"We were still looking," says Ruth with a touch of grim triumph. "And then we felt the explosion. The first one. Through the walls."

"The alarm went off before the first explosion?"

"Like she said." Tariq waves one of the files of notes. "Inside cooperation."

Jo wonders if Tariq really understands what he is implying. An insider at Thames House set off the alarms, deliberately pushing the entire staff out into the fallout. She meets Ruth's eyes, and they both look away.

"How many bombs were there? We thought seven, and then some gas mains or something."

"Eight," says Jo.

"I would have gone up," says Tariq. "But the emergency doors were closed." He looks briefly irritated. "I couldn't even hack into the system to open them."

"Lucky for you." Jo thinks about the sub-basement, with a ceiling so low she can touch it, and shelves so narrowly packed that she has to move sideways between them. There is a librarian's desk, and a cleaners' room, and an ancient changing room. "How long before you got out?"

Ruth and Tariq look at each other, and then away. "Not completely sure," says Ruth. "I think about two weeks. I don't understand why, but the electricity went down after that. Completely. All the doors opened."

"Two _weeks?_ "

"There are emergency rations down there," says Tariq. "I think it's supposed to be a bomb shelter."

"Rations?" Jo doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Protein bars," says Tariq. "I should be a muscle man by now."

Laughter wins. "Right."

"We heard the radio broadcasts then. About the fallout. We got the generator up so we had light, and people started coming in off the street. They were dying." Ruth pauses, remembering. "They were all dying. Not that there were many of them. We realised the evacuation had been done. I suppose the dying ones were left. For the first week or two there were quite a few. Then fewer. Then none. We didn't dare go out once we'd seen that." She looks reflective. "If it had gone on much longer, I'd have given up. Die outside, die in here, what's the difference?"

"Why didn't you pick up our radio signals?" Tariq is standing next to Ruth, protective. Jo can't imagine what those two months must have been like.

"I did," she says, belatedly registering the question. "Malcolm did anyway. That's why I'm here."

"We've been sending signals for weeks. All sorts. Ordinary ones. Military code. Security services codes. Distress signals."

"Maybe the signal was too weak," says Jo. "You're on the backup generator, aren't you?"

"I routed it through every major transmitter around the M25." Tariq looks wounded. "You could have heard it in _Norway_."

Jo feels a cold weight of unease settle in her. "Only Malcolm's code got through," she says slowly.

"You mean someone was _blocking_ – ?"

"No," says Jo. "We can't think about it now. We need to get Harry, and get out."

Ruth is staring at her with a sort of appalled realisation.

" _Not now_ ," says Jo. "Just let me get you out of here and safe." Jo has no idea how she's going to do this, but Ruth looks reassured.

"Let's go," she says. "Let's go _now_."

 

\- -

 

They don't go, because Harry is still on his mysterious detour and Jo can't get him on the radio. She suspects that he has turned it off. They wait. Ruth is pacing the length of the Grid, up and down and a precise square turn. Jo wonders how many times she has done that in the past weeks. Tariq is sitting on a box, watching her.

"Who is this bloke?" he says at last.

"A forensic pathologist. I couldn't have got in without him. We came in his mortuary van."

"With bodies?" enquires Tariq detachedly.

"No," says Jo. "It was empty. It was going to collect bodies."

He assimilates this in silence. "So what's he doing here?"

"You'd better ask him," says Jo, and Ruth looks up from pacing with a brief flicker of interest.

"You don't know?"

"Not completely," says Jo, in a tone that makes it clear she doesn't want to speculate. They have to deal in facts.

When he does turn up, dusk is falling. Jo peers at the grainy CCTV. Harry looks wretched, but he apparently notices the camera and mimes a ridiculous wave.

"Second floor on your left," she says into her radio, and watches him nearly drop his handset in surprise, and then grin at her. She stops herself smiling back. Ruth peers over her shoulder at the screen.

"Not what I thought a pathologist looked like," she says, raising her eyebrows.

"What did you think a pathologist looked like?" says Tariq, who is looking over her other shoulder.

"You know," says Ruth vaguely. "Bald and glasses."

At this opportune moment Harry emerges on to the Grid.

"Where have you been?" Jo looks him over, a quick evaluating glance. He is not incapacitated by grief, she thinks gratefully. Not that type.

Harry looks from one to another of them, and finally at Jo.

"Who the hell is this?"

"My team," says Jo. "Some of them got trapped here."

Harry stares at her. "You said you weren't looking for anyone," he says at last.

"I'll tell you about it later." Jo is firm. "You've been hours, where did you go?"

"I met some people."

"People?" Tariq's mouth drops open. "What people? Where did they come from?"

"I found them. In Smithfields market."

Tariq is beside himself. "People alive in London? I _knew_ there must be some. You know, like life on other planets. It's a numbers game. I told Ruth..."

"Shut up," says Jo brusquely. "There shouldn't be any people here. You two hid. Everybody else should have been evacuated."

She turns to Harry, wanting more than anything to tell him to shut up too. She hates him for a brief instant for whatever it is he's about to say, whichever nightmare he's about to make real.

"Start at the beginning," she says instead.

Harry sits down on a desk and is quiet for a long time. "You know, they chose what bodies I received," he says eventually. "It was army people going in to London, they chose what I got. Most of the dead had radiation poisoning, of course. But some of them seemed to have other problems. As time went on, some of them had underlying malnutrition. One of them I actually thought had typhoid. I wasn't sure what had caused death, sometimes. I kept asking for more bodies, and at first they brought them. Lots of them. And eventually I found one that hadn't died of radiation poisoning at all, had hardly been exposed."

"Keep going." Out of the corner of her eye, Jo can see Ruth's mouth open in a sort of silent horror, but she refuses to jump to conclusions.

"Don't you understand? London was supposed to be evacuated of the living, whether or not they were exposed. They were taken to decontamination centres and all right, a lot of them died there, but a lot of people did _not_ receive a lethal dose." He is on his feet, pacing. Here in this place it reminds her of Adam, and she hates it.

"Right, the ones who've been resettled."

"So who are the people who died, inside London, without being exposed? Those people shouldn't _exist!_ "

"What did you find on your additional post mortems today?" says Jo steadily. She keeps her shaking hands out of sight. She can't let this descend into panic.

"I wanted to find people who'd died after the cordon was closed. Fresh bodies. Well, I found them. Plenty of them."

"How many?" Jo makes herself compile the report in her head. Don't think about the people.

"It doesn't matter how many." He is staring at her, incredulous. "Are you even listening to me? Don't you understand what I'm saying?"

"I understand," says Jo. "How many?"

"Hundreds, for Christ's sake, thousands, I don't know, do you think I've covered the whole city? I've no idea how many poor bastards got stranded here to die a miserable lingering death. Nikki died in her own bed, from radiation. It clearly took days. But she shouldn't have been there. She should have been evacuated. I can time her death for you. About three weeks after the cordon closed."

Jo does not need to ask who Nikki is. She'd lay money on her being blonde, and about five foot five inches tall.

"She might have been an exception," she says gently.

Harry produces a thin journalist's notebook from his pocket. "She wrote _this_. I found it at her flat. Her notes. Her medical notes about looking after people dying of radiation and basic diseases _in London after the cordon had been closed._ "

"Why?" Ruth is on her feet beside him. "Why would that happen? Why would they do it?"

"I thought maybe you could tell me that," snaps Harry, and Ruth takes a step back.

Jo can think of a hundred reasons, but she's not sure now if the time to share them. "Maybe they were considered inevitable casualties," she suggests cautiously.

"They're not casualties until they're _dead_."

"That's not really true."

Harry hasn't finished. "And what about the ones that didn't die of radiation, how exactly are they inevitable?" He waves Nikki's notebook at her. "She's written about typhoid you know, about people dying in childbirth, diabetics dying without insulin. That's not what I call inevitable."

There is a sort of steely, heroic look about him that Jo is too familiar with. "You know we can't save them, don't you?"

"Well, why are you here then?" Harry is furious. "Isn't that your _job?_ "

"No," says Jo, but somehow she finds herself taking the notebook from his outstretched hand.

 

\- -

 

It takes them a long time to get to Smithfields market, working their away around everything coloured red on Jo's map. Harry reads as they go, the places Nikki has visited, hunting for survivors. It is a long list.

"Knightsbridge," he reads out. "What made her go there? Too close to the Hyde Park Corner bomb."

"Who wouldn't loot Harrods?" says Jo, straightfaced, and then she relents. "She wouldn't have known where all the bombs were."

"Wouldn't have cared, more like," mutters Harry, but he keeps reading.

"Body count, approximate. Injuries survey. Blast pattern."

"She was good," says Jo, absently.

"Yes." Harry looks down at the notebook again. "Last investigation we'll ever do together," he adds, without really meaning to.

"She knew she was trapped." Jo is giving him a look that he has become familiar with, as though she can read the stream of his thoughts like a book. It both reassures and worries him. "She used her time well. She thought about after her own death. A lot of people can't do that, you know."

"She might not have died if she'd got out."

"Not a productive way to think." Jo is matter of fact. "Look, Smithfields is just round the corner. Who did you meet? How many?"

"There were just a few, maybe twenty, living in this shop on the corner by the station," says Harry, pointing. "That's as far as I got."

Then they round the corner of the marketplace.

It is heaving with people. They sit in groups, or wander around aimlessly. In one corner of the square there are lines of makeshift beds covered in bodies which might be alive or dead. In another there is a long and orderly queue. After a moment, Harry realises that is it for the use of the water fountain. The market ceiling has survived intact, and under it there are little camps made of the remnants of market stalls and God knows what else. It stinks of people and refuse and filth.

"Jesus Christ," says Jo, next to him.

Harry has been imagining a few houses full of survivors, a makeshift hospital maybe. Not a few thousand people, and not the breakdown of civilisation either.

"I didn't see this," he says unnecessarily, and then feels like an idiot. Jo doesn't appear to hear him.

"Why are they here? Who are they? Why are they outside?" She is talking to herself, he realises. He's probably not worth talking to in this situation. Unexpectedly she takes his arm and pushes him back into one of the alleyways. "Keep quiet," she says fiercely, and then she darts off, noiseless.

 

\- -

 

It's only minutes before she is back with an anxious looking Indian woman in tow.

"This is the doctor I told you about," says Jo. "We can help you."

The woman looks at him with a sort of wary desperation. "Are you really a doctor?"

Harry nods, wondering what Jo is playing at.

"Why are you here? You're not from in here." The woman looks them up and down. "How did you get here? Are there people alive outside? They're not all dead?"

Jo takes both her hands. "What's your name?"

"Rani," she says doubtfully.

"Look, Rani. We came to find out what is going on in London. There are people alive outside and we want to help you. But we need to know what's been happening. We need somebody to tell us. And if you can do that, my friend Harry here can help your son."

Harry hopes to God Rani's son has something curable. Presumably Jo wouldn't commit him to saving somebody dying of radiation sickness.

Rani looks from one to the other of them.

"You two are going to help all of us?" she says, and Harry wants to laugh at her evident doubt. He supposes they don't look much like heroes.

"Yes," says Jo steadfastly, and something about her must convince Rani.

"I was in Hammersmith when the bombs went," she says. "Close but not that close. Well, I live near Edgware road. My children were there. What could I do? I made my way there. It was chaos."

Harry mentally calculates her exposures and wonders that she is alive.

"We did what we were told. We stayed indoors. My husband had burns – very bad, very deep. He had been near the Liverpool street bomb. I knew he was going to die. Then they started the evacuations. I couldn't go with the first people. My husband was dying, I had to nurse him. When he died, I took the children and went to the evacuation centre. It was deserted. I tried another one. Just the same. They had all gone." She pauses, catches her breath. "I thought, they didn't realise I was here. They couldn't have a list of everybody. I was in the house. I went home and I put the children in the car and I started driving. I drove North as fast as I could."

Harry knows what is coming but he feels a cold wash of horror all the same. Please God, don't let this have happened to Nikki.

"There were people on the road before Watford. You know, soldiers, police, I don't know. Two trucks across the road."

"They turned you back?" Jo's voice is soft and expressionless.

Rani nods violently. "I show them my children! They turn me back anyway. Nobody can leave now. Too much risk. Risk of what? We think maybe more bombs, outside, so we turned back."

"Then what?"

Rani is animated now. "I met other people who were turned back. We tried to stay in different places, together. We were frightened. Buildings kept falling down. The bombs made them rickety. We moved around. In some places the water was bad - people died in those places. You had to have your wits about you. Then we heard about this place. It was supposed to be better. There was clean water, and a lady doctor who was helping people here, we heard. Nurses too."

"Oh, God," says Harry, entirely without meaning to.

Rani shrugs. "I never saw her. She was probably dead by the time we got here. But her supplies were here. Stolen, I expect. All kinds of drugs. For a while it helped. But they've run out. You can see. It's still better here. The water is all right. The market building is safe, no roof dropping on your head like in other places. There were restaurants here, warehouses. There was food for a while and we stole more drugs from the hospital." She waves towards Barts. "Food didn't last that long, though."

"Didn't you try and communicate with the outside world?"

Rani looks indignant. "Do you think we are idiots? There's no phone here. No mobile phone reception." She makes the universal gesture, holding her hand up to her ear. "No normal phone either. We tried the phones at our houses, in the restaurants. No electricity either. No nothing."

"No electricity," repeats Jo. For the first time Harry sees her face change.

"No nothing," repeats Rani. "Some people tried some things with batteries. Radios, they tried to make. Nobody seemed to be hearing them. Maybe everybody else was dead, we thought. Or maybe they didn't work."

"They're not all dead," says Jo.

Rani opens her mouth and Harry can tell the next thing is going to be a lot of questions which neither of them can answer.

"Where' s your son?" he says hastily. "What's wrong with him?"

 

\- -

 

Cholera proves to be what's wrong with him.

"He drank the bad water from near Trafalgar Square," says Rani, disapprovingly. "He was trying to run away. Then he came home sick."

Harry sends Rani for salt and sugar and makes six litres of rehydration fluid. "Pour it down him," he says. "Start now. Then make some more. And sit him over a bucket, and when it's full you throw that bucket far, far from here, do you understand? In the river will do."

Rani looks at the bottles. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"He'll be better?"

Harry nods.

Rani throws her arms around him. "You're our saviours," she says. "You're going to save us all."

Harry gives her an awkward pat on the back and looks over her head at Jo, but she is busy scanning the scene. He can almost see the report she's mentally filing.

He becomes aware that people are looking at them, and lets Rani go.

"Who's that?" says another woman to Rani, and an old man ambles over to see what the noise is about.

"They're here to save us," says Rani firmly.

Jo turns round sharply, but it's too late.

"Save us? How are you going to do that?"

"Can you get us out?" says the old man, and Harry feels a prickle of unease. Can he? The old man has the red eyes and sore mouth of early radiation sickness. A crowd has started to gather.

"He might be able to get us out," repeats the old man, louder, and now the crowd around them presses closer. The smell is overpowering. Jo's hand closes unexpectedly around his wrist.

"You can get us out?" It is turning into a disorganised chorus, and Harry can sense the disruption spreading out into the rest of the encampment, heads turning to look at them. He tries and fails to calculate the number of people.

"Oh, _no_ ," mutters Jo under her breath. "We can't help you," she says out loud. "We're trapped here too."

Another woman eyes her up and down. "Doesn't look like it to me. Looks like you came from _outside_. Nobody in here's that clean, sweetpea."

"And if you came in, you can go out," says a teenager next to her. They all press a little closer.

"We can't go out," says Harry. "I promise you. We don't know how to get out, but if you let us work we could help you. I'm a doctor. I can help you."

"We don't need a fucking doctor, we need food and water and a _way out_."

"How did you get in then?"

"How did you get in? _How did you get in?_ "

"Any way you got in we can get out." The teenager grabs Harry by the arm, and he shakes him off, but it is just the start. Hands reach out for them as if they are saints whose touch offers salvation.

It won't do you any good, Harry thinks. These people are the walking dead. The faces press in on all sides, red eyes and scaling skin and swollen mouths. Jo's hand slides down from his wrist and she links her fingers firmly in his. For a moment he is startled to think she might actually be afraid. Then he understands.

" _Now_ ," she mouths.

They run.

There is a nightmarish quality to it. Faces loom up in front of them, hands grab for them, and around them is the darkness and the stench and the edges of it keep retreating, further and further away. Jo runs with her head down, cutting through the crowd, dragging him behind her.

They are nearly at the corner of the square but the crowd makes one last surge at them, as though it is a single sickening creature.

"This way!" shrieks Jo over the noise, but her hand slides from his. He is just quick enough to see her duck into the narrow alley between two stalls.

They follow, of course. They follow as best they can whilst Jo and Harry dodge through the unlit streets. Some are quiet and desperate, some shout after them. Harry's mind is thick and slow with panic. They are between two red circles on the map. Somewhere on this road are invisible lines with death on the other side.

Jo turns to her left.

"No!" He's just too far away, lunges for her, dragging her back. "Not there – "

"What?" She twists deftly out of his grip but he catches hold of her shirt. "What are you _doing?_ "

It's too much delay. There is a shout and then there is another pair of hands grasping at them, levering Jo out of his grip. Harry finds himself wrestling for her, though he has no idea what he is doing, doesn't really know how to fight. His heartbeat is loud in his ears and he does nothing except follow an instinct he doesn't know he has, until suddenly Jo staggers back, released, so that he has to catch her to keep her off the road.

"Sweet Jesus Christ," says somebody form the darkness of the pavement. "Who the fuck is that with her?"

"I didn't know he was with her. I thought he was trying to _get_ her," says the figure in front of Harry.

Jo goes suddenly still.

"Are you all right?" Harry strains his eyes to make out the expression on her face, but it is quite blank. "Are you hurt?" He rounds on the figure, putting himself between them. "And who the hell are you?"

"Jo?" says the man, and now Harry finds himself staring.

"You know her _name?_ Who _are_ you?" The ludicrousness of the situation distracts him. "It's not even her real name."

"It's her real name all right," says the man.

Harry looks from one to the other. Jo hasn't moved, and there is something shocked in her stillness, like a cornered animal. The man in front of them is watching her steadily. Harry suddenly feels like an idiot.

The other man steps off the pavement. "Shall we get a move on?" he suggests. "Some of your friends from the market are really quite near."

Harry turns and realises the street is no longer empty. A collection of figures are just visible, watching them from the end of the road. They don't seem to be coming closer.

"One of the radiation zones starts near here," he says, rather hopelessly. For all he knows, they're already in it.

"Who _are_ you?"

"I'm a pathologist."

"What?"

"From the official investigation. Harry Cunningham."

"Tom Quinn." He inclines his head with a sort of bizarre formality. "I used to work with Jo. Would that be the less official branch of the official investigation?"

"You could say that."

Tom starts moving them along the road at a brisk pace. He seems sure of his direction, and Harry finds that he trusts him absolutely.

"Shouldn't we run?" he says, aware that he sounds ridiculous.

Tom pushes back his jacket to show his holster. "You can run if you like. But there's really no need. I don't know why Jo was unarmed."

"I don't think we were really expecting people to be the problem." Harry looks over his shoulder at Jo, who is following them, dazed and silent.

"Are you all right?" he mouths at her. After a moment she seems to pull herself together, nods. The mysterious other man is bringing up the rear, scanning behind them. Harry can just make out the outline of the gun in his hand.

"That's Zaf," says Tom, following his gaze. "He's a good shot. You don't need to worry."

"I'm not," says Harry crossly. Tom's pace is making him short of breath. "Who is he?"

Tom shrugs. "Another one of us."

Harry follows Tom round a corner. "Look, I'm sure the radiation zone starts around here."

Tom gives him a quick, evaluating look. "You had already run into it," he says. "We're walking out now."

Harry freezes.

"I wouldn't stop if I were you," Tom says coolly. "It's probably a very small dose so far."

Harry starts walking again.

"I'm not planning to tell Jo." Tom makes another turn, left then right. Harry is thoroughly lost. "I didn't tell Zaf. But you're a doctor. What would be the first sign, if any of us were affected?"

Harry pulls himself together. "Vomiting. But not for a while. Diarrhoea. A few people get better after that. Most get sicker. You know how it goes." Everybody has seen somebody in the last stages by now.

Tom nods, evaluating. "You keep an eye out," he says, turning another corner. "If you see any signs, you let me know."

"Well, they'll feel pretty unwell." Harry wonders how Tom can possibly have memorised this route. "So it should be quite obvious."

Tom, unexpectedly, seems to be smiling. "You really don't know us at all, do you?" he says.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are decisions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Co-written by londonsophie. Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/55981.html").

It gets even worse when they get back to Thames House. They walk through the glass doors in a kind of grim single file and Ruth rushes to them.

"What _took_ you so long?" she says to Jo, and then she looks up. "Tom – I – we thought nobody had found – and – " She looks at Harry and then her eyes slide past him and suddenly she sits down hard on a chair. Harry wonders what it is about this man Zaf that reduces women to incoherent silence.

"Ruth," says Zaf, unexpectedly gentle. "It's all right."

"I thought you were..."

He smiles at her.

"You promised you'd do that," she says distractedly. "I don't suppose you remember."

"I remember."

"I don't understand." She seems near to tears. "How can you be here?"

"How can _you?_ " says Zaf, laughing now. He goes past Tom and bends to give her a brief hug. Now that they are in the light, Harry sees that Zaf has a pronounced limp. He wonders how he kept up with them. Next to him, Jo turns away abruptly.

Harry gives up any hope of understanding. They seem like an assortment from an asylum, histrionic Ruth and Tom psychotically detached and Zaf who looks like being trapped in a radioactive city is his idea of a good time. And Jo. Jo, at least, he had thought that he understood. He follows her through a sliding door, into a room full of computers.

"Jo?"

"It's all right." She doesn't turn around. "Just give them a bit of time to get over it. And then we'll talk about what to do."

"Get over what?"

She doesn't reply, and Harry shakes his head, still besieged by images.

"All those _people_ – "

She cuts him off. "We'll talk about it. Give them a minute."

She sits down at a computer, flicks it on. To Harry's astonishment, the screen lights up. "Own generator," she says, her voice flat. "That's how Tariq sent his radio signal too." She types something, shrugs. "Still no phone network."

"Jo, are you all right?"

She stops typing and looks briefly over her shoulder, apologetic. "Yes. I mean – it's a long story. I thought Zaf was dead, you know. We all did."

Harry is not particularly surprised by this. "You thought he was in London?"

"No. Before that."

Harry wants to ask more, much more, but she is concentrating on the screen. "I need to raise Malcolm but I don't know how to use this radio arrangement. Tariq must have done it. I wonder what's happened to Lucas."

Malcolm, Lucas. Harry is aware again that he an outsider.

"What will you tell them?"

"That you were right. I don't think Lucas ever believed in it, you know."

"You told him what I thought?"

She frowns at him. " _He_ told _me_."

Harry thinks about this, and suddenly everything Jo has said to him takes on a new light.

"You're here on orders, aren't you."

Jo just looks back at him. He feels sick before the anger comes.

"You've been _spying on me_. This whole time. Jesus _fucking_ Christ."

"Harry – "

"I suppose I should be flattered? Or at least encouraged that I must have been stirring the right kind of shit to attract the attention of the security services?"

"Harry, listen."

"Did you _know?_ Did you know what we were going to see?"

She is on her feet now, close to him. "Nobody knew anything, all right? We wanted to find out why you were doing what you were doing. Holding up the investigation."

"Oh God, and you knew about Nikki didn't you?"

"Of course I didn't," she hisses, grabbing his arm with a sudden movement, and despite the force of his anger he finds himself faltering. She draws back, taking control of her voice again.

"Yes, I was tasked to find out what you were doing. You were asking awkward questions and making people nervous. You knew that. You knew I wasn't just popping up at your presentations by accident."

He nods, although that is exactly what he'd thought, and he's furious at himself now for not even questioning those stupid coincidences. Despite himself he imagines Lucas, some kind of merciless spymaster, choosing Jo to trail him. You look like his dead girlfriend. Wear your hair down.

"I stopped reporting what you were telling me days ago, Harry. I certainly don't have authorisation to come with you to London. I came because I wanted to find out the truth, and sometimes the only way to do that is to shut your mouth."

"How exactly am I supposed to believe you?"

She doesn't reply. Just folds her arms and stares at him with those big serious eyes and he does believe her, of course, because he needs to. He turns to the wall and leans against it with both hands.

"I really am sorry about your friend," she says gently, after a pause.

He shrugs it off. "Everyone has dead friends."

She is about to say something more when Ruth calls her from the other room. Harry waits until he hears her leave before he lifts his head and turns back around. He isn't angry any more, but he is bone-shatteringly tired. After months of frustrated questions, as always, answers are no comfort.He is ready for someone else to take over, someone who knows what to do. He is ready to go home – wherever that is, but it isn't here.

 

\- -

 

Jo is right. The excitement attached to Zaf dies down, eventually, but only after Ruth has hugged him several times and Tariq has been introduced and re-introduced and Zaf and Tom have explained their unlikely alliance in minute detail. Harry notices Jo doesn't say much through all of this. She sits on what is apparently her own desk, watching without much interest. Her eyes flicker occasionally over Zaf, who has not only a limp, but a series of fine scars and an occasional, rasping cough. Harry exercises his medical eye briefly and decides he has been in prison – fight injuries, and old TB. Jo's face gives away nothing.

It is Zaf who calls an end to it.

"So what now?"

Ruth looks as though she might laugh. "You don't have an infallible plan?"

"It stopped at about this point," says Zaf. "And it didn't have you in it anyway."

"Or a few thousand people in Smithfield market," suggests Jo.

"A few _thousand?_ " Ruth looks at Tom, appalled. "You never said that many."

He shrugs. "It was dark."

"You were expecting fewer, weren't you?" Jo says, still in that flat quiet voice.

" _Expecting?_ "

Tom raises his hands for silence. "I knew about them. The army have been running ops into the city for weeks. The dying are going to be moved on Friday, to a camp that's been set up at Edgware."

"But why are they there in the first place?" Harry persists. "And Edgware's not even outside the cordon."

Tom ignores the first question. "It's far enough out that there'll be no danger to those running it. The people at the market are unsaveable. Does it matter where they die?"

"They are not unsaveable," Harry says incredulously. "I saved one today. Six litres of water, twelve spoonfuls of sugar and six of salt. People are dying of _curable diseases_. They don't all have the fatal dose."

"There's us," says Ruth, hands clenched. "We don't."

Tom is unmoved. "If anyone can be saved they will be. Some of the least affected people have already been evacuated."

"That's bullshit." Harry looks to Jo for support, but she is silent. "The people we met today hadn't seen an official since they were turned away at the cordon weeks ago."

"Of course they haven't," Tom says patiently, with just an edge of anger. "It's been kept quiet. But there's fresh water at the market, isn't there? Why do you think that is?"

He's looking at Harry now, and Harry makes himself stare back. "Luck."

"Don't be stupid. You rush in there and evacuate everyone now, what's going to happen? They're dying. The first thing they'll want to do is contact their families. Then bang, it's out, nothing you can do. Chaos."

"It _should be out._ It should be chaos."

"This country is already in chaos, you want to make more? What we're talking about doesn't leave this room."

Tariq almost falls off his chair. "They switched off this city like a _light_. Electricity, phones, everything. They deliberately left those people to starve and die in secret. We're not going to tell anybody?"

Tom rounds on him and he visibly shrinks back. "We're not going to destabilise this country at a time of crisis. What good is telling anybody going to do? The evacuation camps could not cope with more people and they had been too long in the city. A judgement call was made. A few were sacrificed for the many. It isn't the first time and it won't be the last."

"But it was the _wrong_ judgement call," Harry says, hardly believing what he is hearing. "Everyone should have been evacuated."

"Doesn't matter now. Same question. What good is telling anybody going to do?"

"It'd be the truth for a start," Harry says. Everyone ignores him.

"People should be accountable," says Ruth.

"Accountability is hardly top priority right now."

"It's been too long." Jo is pale and shocked but she speaks quietly, not in protest. "If this is only happening now, it's taken too long."

"Yes it has," says Tom. For the first time he looks as if the full weight of the situation is on him, but the expression is gone in an instant and it only makes Harry more angry.

"And what _is_ top priority?" he asks. "If not accountability? Keeping secrets? Covering up mistakes? It sounds like the army cares a lot more about that than they do about fixing their mistakes."

"Oh come off it, " Zaf says easily. "If the only concern was keeping a secret the army would have rounded up all those people in the market weeks ago and lit a bloody great fire. There, problem solved."

It's the first he's spoken, and it's not until Harry has seen Jo send him an irritated look that he realises Zaf is only diffusing the argument; doesn't really believe what he's said. Tom takes the opportunity he's been handed.

"The top priority is protecting the nation. That means getting all the information we can from this place back to the service, continuing with the investigation and preventing further attacks. We let the army deal with things here as effectively and quietly as possible and make sure it _doesn't get out_. That's our job. All of us."

Jo is still silent, but Ruth, hands clenched into fists, looks about to refute Tom's argument passionately. Harry watches her open her mouth, close it again, and sit down as if she has been hit. "It's a terrible decision, Tom Quinn," she says softly.

Tom, bizarrely, smiles at her, and reaches across to take her hand. "It's one we're all making," he says, looking to the group. "Yes?"

There is a long silence. Ruth is the first to nod, then Zaf. Then a pause. Then Jo. Tariq just turns away, which Tom seems to count as agreement. Harry is mesmerised by their faces.

Eventually he realises that they are all watching him.

"What?"

"Do you agree, Harry?"

"I didn't think my decision mattered." He sounds petty, hates it. "I'm not a member of the secret services."

Tom laughs without amusement. " _Primum non nocere_ , that's your way, isn't it? Life's not as simple as that, you know."

"It is for me," says Harry firmly. "I'm a doctor."

Jo is looking at him across the room with unexpected sympathy. "I think you'll find you're one of us, now," she says.

 

\- -

 

Having bluffed her way through authorising someone she's never met as part of her investigation team, Siobhan feels she has never been more justified in asking what the hell is going on.

"Apparently your man I just cleared with the army knows about the situation in London. What _situation_ in London?"

She expects the MI5 man to be relieved, or at least to thank her for the favour, but he closes his eyes and looks so pale and old she wonders if he is going to faint. "Then it's true."

" _What's_ true? What's my errant pathologist doing sneaking into London, into the middle of situations, for God's sake?" She glances around the tiny, windowless meeting room, the stacks of unsorted files, feeling cornered and manipulated. "I don't even know who you are."

The man pulls himself together with a suddenness that surprises her. He smiles politely, habit not feeling. "Yes. My name is Malcolm. I don't know the full story but I can tell you what I know."

"Then tell me."

It doesn't take him long to convince Siobhan that there _is_ something going on in London. Evidence of an army cover-up, an emergency transmission from a supposedly evacuated area, Harry Cunningham's insistence that the bodies he received were not the full story.

"I should have listened to him," she says, once she has realised what it all means.

"He didn't know himself," the man called Malcolm says firmly. "None of us knew."

Siobhan shakes her head. "Somebody did. Somebody _organised_ this." Somebody like me, she thinks, at the same time as we were assuring the country that everything was under control, everything possible was being done. Everything possible to bury the mistakes. "I need to make some calls."

"I'd prefer if you didn't. We've no idea who knows about this and only circumstantial evidence. Someone will call you soon enough, I imagine."

He is right, as it turns out. Siobhan passes a few restless hours going over the evidence again, pulling it together with her own information from the investigation and the initial reports. More pieces fall into place. People could be killed for stumbling on to this, she realises, calm somehow. What the hell are they doing down there?

When the phone rings she sits up straight, hooking her hair behind her ears.

"I wasn't aware," the General says, "that you'd been informed of the situation in London."

There's an edge to his politeness which means, she supposes, that he's spent the evening consulting with everyone who _has_ been informed and has confirmed that she definitely hasn't. What is there, a bloody list? she thinks. Then she realises that of course there is.

"That's because I wasn't," she says. "But I am now, and I expect to be kept informed. What's the extent?"

A marked hesitation. Only a few months ago the army were running everything, but the investigation has taken precedence now and Siobhan knows she has authority. She waits, and the briefing is forthcoming. Concise detail, detached language. A ready-made police report, the _situation_ very nearly in past tense. She listens in silence.

"Who else knows?"

"Only certain units at the operations centre. The DG at Five, no one officially at Six but I wouldn't put it past them to know anyway. No one at Whitehall."

"The Chief?" she asks, wondering that her incompetent superior could have kept this from her.

"No. It was thought he's too... political."

Too liable to getting drunk with Old Boys, she hears, and understands. "Right. I see no need for this to go further."

His relief is obvious, and she wonders briefly what the reaction would be had she proposed publicising the whole thing. "I understand some of my people are in London," she says.

There's a pause. "A few more than we expected. Security Services I believe."

"I don't care who they belong to. Has anyone been affected?"

"They knew to keep to the safe zones."

"Good. They will all return to Edinburgh immediately. You will receive copies of their reports which I am sure will be short and uninteresting. I don't think there's anything else to discuss, do you?"

When she hangs up she puts her head in her hands and for the first time since the bombings she feels completely and utterly overwhelmed. "I don't want this job," she says before she can stop herself, "God help me I don't want it. What did I just do?"

She turns to see Malcolm watching her from the doorway. All the spies she's met in her career have been hard and paranoid and a nightmare to liaise with. This man looks like a librarian, or perhaps an accountant. She wonders if he's been pulled from retirement.

"You just saved all the people who could be saved," he says quietly, but she can't tell if he really believes it.

 

\- -

 

Later, Ruth is glad that there's no electricity. It means the city is in darkness when they venture outside, and she doesn't have to see the damage she's imagined for so many weeks.

Tom and Zaf argue with the army patrol. These aren't the kind of people Ruth has longed for; they are nervous and angry and armed. She stays back, watching Jo watching Zaf, watching Tariq staring out to the black city with a sort of amazement, as if he'd been hoping it was all a dream. The pathologist has his hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed intently on the ground.

One of the officers is gesticulating at the group; _you said two_. Ruth realises with a kind of terrified calm that the army have been ordered not to let anyone out, and of course that includes her and Tariq.

"They were sheltered," Tom is saying, irritated, "they haven't been affected by the radiation. It's not a bloody contagious disease. We're leaving, now."

Eventually they pile into the back of the patrol truck, sitting facing each other like soldiers, heading Tom says for the operations centre. The driver slams down the partition as though they are prisoners. Ruth, who has never been in an army vehicle, thinks wildly of wars, foreign countries. Something of her thoughts must show on her face.

"It's nearly over," mutters Tom in her ear, under the noise of the van.

"I can't believe I'm here. Or you're here."

"Thought you'd seen the last of me?"

"I thought I'd seen the last of _everyone._ "

Tom looks thoughtfully at her. Whatever he sees must be reassuring. "You'll be all right," he says. "I know you."

Ruth looks away, because she is near to tears. Opposite them, Jo has fallen asleep, her head jolting against the partition as the van rattles around the North Circular. There is an unlit cigarette about to drop from her fingers. Tariq leans over to take it, and slides his jumper underneath her head. She doesn't even wake.

There doesn't seem to be anything to say. They slow for a checkpoint, and next to Ruth, Tom opens his eyes. "It's the M1," he says in a low voice. "I'll make sure no one else tries to stop you on the way to Edinburgh."

Ruth nods, too tired to take in the words. When they slow to a stop Tom jumps out deal with the checkpoint. Jo doesn't even open her eyes. Zaf and the pathologist are talking in low voices, Harry having made some protest but capitulated almost immediately, nodding with his head down at whatever stern things Zaf is saying.

It takes some minutes for Ruth to realise the significance of Tom's words. She clambers out of the back of the van, muttering about wanting some air.

Outside it's dark, a line of army vehicles, no streetlamps. She sees Tom a distance away, talking with a soldier. He dismisses the man when he sees Ruth approaching, and turns to her with a shake of his head. "Time for me to leave you."

"What?" Her voice comes out high and unnatural. "Where are you going?"

"Keep it down," says Tom, but none of the others have followed her. "I have a few things to see to, then I'm going back to the Army operations centre. I'm more useful there."

"You're more useful in the Security Services where you belong."

"They don't want me, Ruth. Here I can work."

"They couldn't turn you down, not now."

"They can and they will."

His calm tells Ruth she is beaten. He isn't even arguing. It's nothing, of course. She has given him up already, given them all up, one by painful one. It shouldn't be any harder the second time.

"I can be useful here," says Tom. "We rely on the army now, Ruth. They're holding this country together."

She is cold with loss.

"I know you're going to go, whatever I say."

He nods.

"So you'll have to promise me one thing."

"All right," he says, with a sudden twitch of a smile. "Go on."

"Those poor trapped people, Tom. You can make sure they're looked after. You promise me that, that you'll do everything you can to – to help them."

She is reminded suddenly of a long-ago conversation with Harry Pearce on a rooftop; _I am not naive_. Maybe she is, or maybe she's just scared, but she can't bring herself to ask Tom how much he had been lying when he'd said the army would do their best.

He is silent, and though he is master of the blank face, Ruth thinks perhaps he is a little surprised.

"I could have been there," she says. "It could have been me. Please, Tom."

"All right," he says. "I promise you that."

Ruth takes a deep breath. "You're not going to tell the others?"

"I don't know them. And I think you and I have said goodbye before," he reminds her, and Ruth almost laughs. "Anyway," he adds, "this is a small country now. Maybe we'll say goodbye again."

"Maybe we will."

Someone shouts an order and Tom nods towards the van. "Don't miss your ride."

She wants to embrace him but feels self-conscious. He gives her arm a quick squeeze. "Go."

Ruth climbs back to her seat and a moment later they start to move again. Tariq looks at her questioningly.

"Tom's not coming with us," she explains.

Tariq is unconcerned. "Okay."

Ruth glances to Zaf, who is watching her in silence. She can't think of anything to say. After a moment she realises she doesn't have to. He smiles at her, and he could be the Zaf that has lived in Ruth's head all these years, the one who once asked for a desk next to hers. She makes herself smile back.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is aftermath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Co-written by londonsophie. Originally posted [@eljay](http://belantana.livejournal.com/56388.html).

Lucas is hardly surprised to find the door of the hotel room unlocked. He stands there stupidly for a moment, but if someone is waiting to kill him they'd leave the door locked, take him out while he was fumbling with keys. He's too tired for anything more logical than that, so he opens the door.

Tom is sitting on the floor beneath the window, arms crossed over his knees. Once Lucas has recovered from the adrenalin burning through every nerve in his body, he shuts the door behind him and drops his coat on the bed.

"You missed our meeting," Tom says.

Lucas considers this in silence. For thirty hours he's been asked to name his source, and for thirty hours he's insisted the source was an anonymous dead-drop, with no way of knowing if the team who'd arrested him had dealt with Tom just as efficiently. Apparently they haven't, but it's hard to be sure of anything at the moment.

"What did you have for me?" he says eventually.

"What did you tell them I had for you?"

Lucas has been holding back Tom's information for weeks, wary that Dolby's interest in it had nothing to do with the information and everything to do with where it was coming from. "I said I was phasing out the source. I said you had nothing more to give me."

Tom nods; agreeing, approving, Lucas isn't sure. "You look wrecked," he says. It's a critical assessment not concern.

"I haven't slept."

"They tortured you?"

Lucas finds room in himself to be faintly amused. "Jesus, Tom. No. It was an unnecessarily long debrief is all. Ending in a suggestion I leave well alone and a fairly unsubtle reassignment."

"Which you're obeying?"

Lucas stares at him. "Should I? What _did_ you have for me?"

"Nothing of value."

For a moment Lucas is going to argue, but there's no point pretending that he doesn't understand what Tom's playing at. "You're running a hell of a risk being here," he says instead.

Tom shrugs, dismissive. "No one's watching you at the moment. I've checked. You're far less interesting than what's been happening in London."

Lucas sits down. "What's been happening?" he asks suspiciously.

"I think it's best you get the reports from your team."

His team, in London. Jo, he thinks, who still carries part of Adam in her after all. Zafar Younis must have found a way to contact her. There'll be nothing in their reports, Lucas knows. No mention of Tom either probably, if they have any sense. "Where are they now?"

"Heading back to Edinburgh. You should go."

"Where?"

"Edinburgh," Tom repeats patiently.

Lucas closes his eyes. It's tempting not to open them again. "I'll drive up first thing in the morning."

"I want everyone reporting first thing."

"I don't remember you being in charge," Lucas warns.

Tom is silent for a moment. "I need to go. I have things to deal with. I don't think we should meet again."

"No. I'd worked that one out for myself."

Tom already has his keys in his hand, and is standing by the door watching him. Lucas is aware that he must look terrible, moving his leg restlessly, shoulders hunched in from the walls. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger; what a load of bollocks. What hasn't killed Lucas has also made his weaknesses so bloody obvious anyone can find the buttons to press.

"Ruth's alive," Tom says finally. No inflection in his voice.

Lucas lifts his head. "What?"

"Go back to Edinburgh, Lucas."

Lucas doesn't reply. Eventually, though, he gets up, collects his things and follows Tom outside.

 

\- -

 

The last time Ruth was in Edinburgh was for Sam's wedding, nearly seven years ago. When they arrive in the small hours of the morning, the only thing she recognises is the floodlit castle overlooking the city. The streets are deserted.

They go to the grid, though it isn't the grid. Ruth is glad for the hour that the only person she has to face is Malcolm, who is not one for emotional reunions. Within a few minutes he and Tariq are talking animatedly about things no one else understands. Ruth ghosts a smile. Tariq must be so relieved to be amongst other people again. Not to mention people who have conversational skills that extend beyond the classics and the dreary account of everything that has ever happened in the history of MI5.

Jo is on the phone to Lucas. She is stretching tiredly, free hand in her hair, so familiar that Ruth finds herself smiling again. They've a few hours, Jo tells her when she hangs up. "I'll get someone to show you to my flat; I'll be along in a bit. I need to get started on the report."

Ruth starts to say that she isn't tired before realising that the broken snatches of sleep on the drive up have been worse than nothing.

"Have a rest," Jo says. "Eat. It's going to be a long day."

Ruth doesn't want to eat and she doesn't want to rest, despite the exhaustion. What she wants to do is go over her boxes of evidence, read through her notes, remind herself in logical sequence of everything that has happened. Maybe then she can work out the next step. But she doesn't even know where the boxes are, having to content herself with Jo's assurance they are safe.

She thanks the girl who shows her to Jo's tiny flat, and has time for a blessedly warm shower before Tariq is knocking at the door, smiling awkwardly. She isn't surprised to see him again so soon. She is even a little bit relieved.

"Where are you staying?"

Tariq shrugs. "Malcolm's for now. Apparently they're sorting us some rooms of our own. I suppose that means kicking other people out." He grins. "I've never felt so important."

She leaves him sitting on the sofa while she makes tea. One day when they were alone she'd asked him what they should do when they ran out of tea, and Tariq, who drank it only for warmth and to keep her company, had said quite seriously that life would not be worth living. It had been one of the few times they'd laughed.

When she brings the mugs back from the kitchen she thinks for a moment that he's left. She pauses, confused and hurt. Then she sees him on the floor where he's slid from the sofa, arms around his knees like a gangly teenager, crying silently but with such intensity that he's shaking.

Ruth hovers. Nine long weeks, watching everyone else disappear and die around them until they were the only ones left, and they've talked of what they would do if nobody came, and if there was nobody left to come. They've talked about the end of the world but they've never cried and they've never (Ruth can hardly believe it now) never touched.

Finally she sets the cups down awkwardly on the floor, and she sits next to Tariq and puts her arms around him until he can't cry any more.

"Your family?" she asks.

He nods, then shakes his head. Ruth is horrified that no one has asked. To the rest of them a faceless institution and each other are all they need to be home.

 

\- -

 

Jo practices her report for Lucas four times in front of her bathroom mirror, watching the expression on her face, the movements of her eyes. She gets dressed with care, makes up her face for the first time in months. There needs to be no trace of that other Jo, the one who is tired and unsure and frightened. She recites her report one more time, considers breakfast but finds the fridge empty, and then she puts on her only pair of high heeled shoes and walks out of her flat in the official accommodation.

He's not waiting on her floor, even though she knows perfectly well that he and Tariq are both sleeping in Malcolm's flat in the next corridor. Instead he's downstairs by the security desk, leaning casually against a wall as though he's waiting for a date. The sight of him is still ridiculous and impossible and she almost wants to walk past him, because the Jo she constructed upstairs in front of the mirror will not survive this. But he has fallen into step beside her, and it is too late.

"You want to tell Lucas, don't you."

It catches her off guard.

"I've thought about it," she says after a moment, and her voice comes out even and cool. Some things have changed, she thinks with a trace of satisfaction. She doesn't tell him she's practised telling Lucas four times in the mirror. Some things haven't changed.

"I'd want to, in your place." The glass doors slide open and they emerge into the freezing Edinburgh morning.

"He knows about Harry's suspicions already."

"The suspicions that Harry will tell him were unfounded." Zaf is implacable.

"He's part of my _team_ , Zaf." He was there when you weren't, she adds in her head, but that is thoroughly unfair. "Don't you remember what it's like?" she says instead.

Zaf looks sideways at her, a long thoughtful look. She used to be able to tell what he was thinking, once.

"I do remember," he says. "I remember what you'd do to protect them. You're putting Lucas at risk. He's been taken once, they're suspicious of him, they're probably bugging him at home. He needs to be kept clear of this."

"He's not an idiot, Zaf."

"I'm not suggesting he is."

"You're suggesting something."

Zaf hesitates. "Ruth has evidence of inside cooperation. That's a hell of an investigation we're sitting on. We've no idea who it was."

"You think it was _Lucas?_ "

"No," Zaf says irritably. "I think we need to prioritise. We need to find that insider. We can't put the investigation at risk with all this other stuff."

"You don't trust him."

Zaf looks resigned. "I don't trust anybody. I don't _know_ anybody. I don't even know what's happened to you, let alone who the hell all these other people are."

"Maybe we don't trust you."

"I wouldn't be at all surprised."

"And you don't give a shit either." Jo can feel her face burning.

"Why are you so angry?" He shoves his hands in his pockets, not looking at her. "Ever since – I mean, since you saw me. You've been angry."

"You couldn't have got me a message?" It is easier this way, easier to work up a righteous rage against Zaf than to rail uselessly against time and fate. "All this time, you couldn't have..."

"I was leaving messages for Adam," he says shortly. "He was never one to consider that he might not be around to get them, so nobody else knew about it. How could I get anything to you, without risking my position and your safety? Come on, Jo, you know all this."

"Do you know there was a body? It turned up in Islamabad."

This makes Zaf pause. "No. I didn't know that. That must have been my... employers."

"Adam wouldn't let me see the pictures of it."

"What?"

"They had to identify it by _teeth_. The ones that were left."

"Jo, stop it, for God's sake."

But she can't stop. "They played us tapes of you screaming."

That makes him come to a halt in the middle of the pavement and too late, too late, Jo remembers everything that he doesn't know.

They look at each other for a long time.

"Is that how Adam died?" says Zaf at last.

Jo shakes her head. "A better way. The right way."

He nods, understanding. She finds to her surprise that her face is wet, though she's not sure whether it's for Adam or for Zaf or just perhaps for herself.

"Easy," says Zaf. He puts his arm around her shoulders and it is so simple to turn to him as though she is twenty five and there is nothing he can't protect her from. She stands there for a moment, remembering.

"Forget it," says Zaf, as though he can read her mind. "Forget it all. The whole thing was a lie, forget the body, forget the Redbacks, concentrate on what we're doing _now_."

She pulls away. "You mean lying?"

Somehow, Zaf nearly laughs. "Yes. That."

 

\- -

 

In the event, they meet Malcolm outside Lucas's office and Lucas is trusting enough, or perhaps suspicious enough, to let them debrief together. He has already spoken with Tariq and Ruth about their investigation and looks grim at the prospect of the work ahead.

The three of them sit in a neat row and look at him over his desk.

"So you were busy in my absence," Lucas says wryly. Jo thinks that he has never really learned the style of being in charge, has none of the choler and sarcasm of Section D's previous leaders. He looks now at Jo with a trace of reproof.

"You disappeared," she says. "We had information that needed to be acted upon."

"So you used somebody MI5 hasn't seen for five years?"

"I lied," says Zaf unrepentantly. "I told Malcolm you'd cleared me. And I stole your phone."

Lucas raises his eyebrows.

"What for?"

Zaf pauses. "To find Jo," he says at last. The room ripples with surprise at his unprofessional candour. Zaf doesn't appear embarrassed. He sits there calmly, waiting for the next question. Jo realises, after a startled moment, that of course it is a lie. Zaf is a better manipulator now than Adam ever was.

Lucas moves on. "And then?"

"Malcolm thought there was a transmission from Thames House. Jo had already left for London and he couldn't get in touch with her. So I went."

"I should have traced it sooner," Malcolm says dejectedly. Jo is momentarily glad of his shame as it deflects attention from how Zaf got into London. She expects Lucas to ask anyway. He doesn't.

"What about you?" he asks Jo instead.

"The pathologist, Harry Cunningham," she explains. "He was suspicious that the cordon had been closed too early, with people inside it. He thought there were some non-radiation deaths, and some with the wrong timing."

"So you thought you'd better have a look?"

"You weren't here to ask," points out Jo, but she knows Lucas will understand, has understood already.

"And you found...?" Lucas has their preliminary reports about London in front of them. He spreads them out on his desk.

"Ruth and Tariq."

"And?"

"Dead people."

"The pathologist was wrong?"

"He might have been right. Some people may have stayed alive a little longer but not made it to the evacuation. But by the time we were there, there didn't seem to be anybody alive. We split up and did a sweep of central London, the parts between the radiation zones."

Lucas looks from face to face.

"You found nobody alive at all? Ruth and Tariq had survived alone of everyone in the city?"

"They were in the sub-basement," says Jo. "And they stayed down there. They were never exposed. How many buildings do you think have a lead lined sub basement, Lucas?"

Everybody reaches the same conclusion at the same time.

"We didn't check Six," says Zaf. "They can get their own officers out. And their building is too close to the Waterloo explosion for us to go and have a look."

Lucas is scanning each of their faces, and then he sits back, having apparently come to some conclusion.

"Good," he says. "Thanks."

"That's it?" Jo, who has been debriefed many times by Lucas, eyes her watch surreptitiously. His shortest has been two hours. He can't have finished already.

"Well, I know what I need to say to report upwards," says Lucas equably. "Isn't that the point?"

He stands, and the three of them automatically stand with him.

"Lucas..." Jo starts, but he gives her a quick warning look, so brief that she wonders if she imagined it.

"Thanks for all of your first reports. I expect the complete versions by tomorrow." He pushes the door open and lets them file out past him, one by one.

 

\- -

 

By the time Lucas has finished with Harry, Harry is so tired that he is nauseated. When he gets up, the room swings a little around him. He wonders when he last ate, but he can't remember. He is aware that Lucas is saying something, but it doesn't seem to make much sense.

"Sorry, what?"

"You need a rest," says Lucas. This much Harry agrees with. He gets to the door, feeling as if his legs are about to fall from under him. Lucas shakes his hand. "I'll put in a request for official liaison for now, so that you can work with Ruth and Tariq on their investigation."

Harry nods his thanks, suddenly not trusting his voice, desperate to get out of that hot little room. The corridor is cool and empty and for a minute he rests against the wall. His face is damp with sweat. He knows about survivor effect, and post traumatic stress, and he understands perfectly about delayed reaction. He has seen it all before. He wishes Nikki were here to laugh at him, or maybe to tell him to get a grip. With the thought of her voice in his head, he makes his way to the men's room and splashes his face with water. The mirror is unforgiving. His eyes are red and he is pale and unshaven. He wonders what Lucas thought of him. Lucas has probably seen worse. He straightens up and tries to smile at himself, but it is a grisly sight.

"Get a _grip_ ," he says to his reflection since Nikki isn't here to say it, and then a wave of nausea sweeps over him, and he stumbles into a cubicle and is sick until he retches bile.

When he comes out, it is to find Zaf there, leaning against the wall with a curious look on his face.

"Sorry," says Harry, rinsing the bitterness from his mouth. "I'm coming."

"No hurry," says Zaf quietly.

"Isn't Jo writing the report already?"

"I think you need some rest," says Zaf.

Harry doesn't understand the expression on his face. "It's just reaction. And I haven't eaten. Don't you people ever eat?"

"We're actually robots underneath," says Zaf solemnly, and Harry smiles, which he supposes is what Zaf intended.

"I'm OK. I'm not used to – well. It's been a pretty odd few days, for someone like me."

Zaf gives him a long look, but he says nothing and just follows Harry out into the corridor. Jo and Ruth are standing together, apparently waiting for him.

"I'd better get it down before the details start to slip," says Jo. "And then the real work starts."

"Following our leads from Thames House?" Ruth is anxious, as if her investigation might not stand up to scrutiny.

"Yes. Within the section, until we're sure what we're dealing with." Jo pauses, because Zaf has slipped behind her and is muttering something in her ear. She turns to look at him, a brief shocked glance, and then she lowers her eyes quickly. Harry can't think how there can be any more bad news, now.

"I'd like your reports as quickly as possible," she says. She seems to be looking directly at him, and then her eyes slide away, over Ruth and then to Zaf. "We've got a lot to do in a – in a very short space of time." Harry wonders why she is faltering.

Zaf glances at her and then takes over, issuing instructions so that people filter away one by one. Harry finds himself leaning against the wall. He is so very tired.

"You report first," says Zaf, propelling him to a chair.

Harry looks from one to the other of them. "You know what I'm going to say already, don't you?" He tries to think back to the beginning. Jo like an apparition at his lecture, when he opened his eyes. "Was it worth it all, all this? We didn't change anything."

"We have the truth," Zaf says firmly. "And it'll come out when the time is right."

"It's always worth it, isn't it? For you people. The end justifies the means."

Jo turns away, not quickly enough to hide the start of tears. Harry watches Zaf touch her shoulder, gentle and familiar, and is surprised to feel what might be jealousy, if he weren't in love with a dead girl.

Zaf is still looking at him. "The end does justify the means," he says quietly. "I'm afraid that's something you're going to have to remember."

 

\- -

 

There's no rooftop sanctuary here. Jo crosses to the gardens down the street, empty of people in the freezing wind, the trees stripped bare. She cups her hands to light a cigarette but it blows out, twice.

It's Lucas who catches her up, eventually. She'd expected somebody, because the new offices are small and nothing goes unnoticed, but she doesn't expect Lucas. She watches him crossing the road, scanning it as though he might be followed, clocking the stationary cars and the lit windows. She wonders if he'll ever be able to stop watching.

He sits down without saying anything.

"You know, don't you?"

"Enough," he says.

"Where did you go?"

"For a very long interrogation in Birmingham," says Lucas. "It wasn't optional."

She nods. It's as she expected. "I wanted to tell you the whole story."

"You don't need to." She can feel him looking at her. It must be obvious that she's been crying, but then she has plenty of reasons to cry, and none of them are secret.

"That pathologist," says Lucas, tentative, feeling his way. She likes him for trying.

"Yes." It's better left unsaid. "I know." For the hundredth time she tries to retrace their routes through London, the colours on the map. She thinks about the hours she spent with Ruth and Tariq whilst Harry wandered God-knows-where.

"And there's Zaf."

"I think that's supposed to be the good part." She takes the cigarette again and tries unsuccessfully to light it. Lucas takes it from her, bends his head away from the wind, lights it in a single stroke. He takes it from his mouth and puts it between her fingers.

"Didn't know you smoked anymore," he says.

"Sometimes," says Jo. "Really bad times."

Lucas lights his own cigarette, and they sit side by side whilst the city quietens around them. It grows darker, and colder, and eventually Lucas drops his coat over her shoulders and gets up, but she doesn't move. She could be anywhere in the dark, by the river, on the roof, a thousand places she will never see again. Adam will come and get her in a minute, and they'll all be there inside, whole and warm and laughing, going to the pub, going home.

"Come in soon," says Lucas quietly.

"I will," she says. "In a little while."


End file.
